


After Hours

by pied_r_piper



Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-01-06 12:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18388079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pied_r_piper/pseuds/pied_r_piper
Summary: Remember the rooftop partiesRemember the friendsRemember the way I love you nowAnd the way that I loved you then("Now and Then" by Lily Kershaw)





	1. now and then

* * *

**now**

* * *

The door slams so hard the bell screams, toppling on impact and showering the entranceway with bits of ribbon and dried lavender. Several patrons jump at the sound, a low murmuring of surprise rippling through the café. Ignoring the chattering gazes swerving in his direction, he pauses his anger just long enough to shake the rubbish from his hair, dark brown eyes narrowing like the scope of a sniper rifle. " _Tachikawa_."

Mimi closes the bakery's cold display case of assorted desserts, each one topped with her signature monogrammed chocolate plaques. Her honey curls are twisted into an immaculate braid, the collared pistachio green blouse she wears tucked neatly into a beige skirt. Nothing is ever out of place with her. " _Yagami_."

"I need to talk to you."

Her gaze sweeps down, taking in his wrinkled, faded red button-up with a hole at the hem and the stiff work jeans cuffed over muddied boots. "Well, I thank you for dressing up for the occasion."

Taichi doesn't budge. "I've put up with your music, your signage, your smells—," her nose twists, followed by another exaggerated glance down his attire, "—but this is crossing the line." And he shakes a closed fist at her, paper stub enclosed tight between calloused fingers.

"I am flattered," she replies, dusting her manicured hands, "but even the mayor's daughter can't waive parking tickets."

"Assistant mayor," he corrects, because he knows it'll sting, and it does: her smile remains, but the shine to her eyes takes a noticeable shift. Emboldened, he strides forward and slams the paper down on the counter with enough force to shake the coffee in the cup by the register. "Where is he?"

"I'm meant to keep track of your employees now, too?"

"Where is he?" he repeats, voice descending to a new octave.

Towards the back of the café, the restroom door opens. Their target is in the middle of wringing out his wet hands with a floral themed napkin, but he stops in mid-step at the sight of them together. Panicked, he yells, "I wasn't here for the coffee! I—I hate her coffee, it's bad, so—so badly brewed and fairly traded—,"

Taichi points to the cup on the counter.

"Not mine," he denies at once.

"Fine." Taichi steps aside to make a clear path to the exit. "In that case, you've nothing keeping you here. Get to work."

She stands up straight. "Have your coffee, first, dear."

"Motomiya, I mean it."

"It's getting cold," and she pushes the small porcelain cup across the counter towards him.

He takes a step forward, staring between them nervously, and Taichi intervenes, pointing at the door. "Motomiya, go."

"Daisuke, stay."

" _No_ —you come with me, right now—,"

"Daisuke, stay—that's a good boy, stay, right there—,"

"Don't you—no, don't you pick up that cup, don't—bad,  _bad_ , Daisuke! Stop—,"

"That's a good boy, now take a sip—,"

"Daisuke, I swear to God, if you finish that coffee, I—,"

"Just one last sip, that's all there is, come on—,"

" _Daisuke—no_!"

But he's already gulped the scalding coffee in one go, eyes watering in pain, and puts the cup back down on the counter, coughing. He pushes his way past them, searching for the door. "That's—ugh, I mean—so gross, just disgusting," he says, backing away. "I—I'm not even—I can't even have another cup for like, three, four hours—,"

Taichi only holds the door open, waiting until Daisuke's gone stumbling out of it before glancing back at her. Still smiling, Mimi places the cup and saucer into a collectible bin for cleaning, sweeping up the countertop with a single stroke of her dishtowel. So Taichi responds as any adult would: he digs the heels of his boots into the rug in front of the door, scrapping as much dirt and grime as he can off onto the immaculate threads, and announces, "Anyone who brings their café receipt to the bar downstairs gets half-priced drinks, all night," to a delighted crowd.

"You're the devil," she says, singsong voice belying the mounting fury.

"Yes, I am," he says, sliding the last of the mud off his boots onto the doorstep. "So make a deal with me. You stay away from my employees, and I'll stay away from yours."

It's the first time her smirk slips, or rather, freezes, round hazel eyes sharpening with confusion. Her mouth opens, but then a lithe figure is racing up the stairs behind him, blushing when she sees him at the top of the steps. She stammers something Mimi can't distinguish, but which makes Taichi grin, as they pass each other in her rush to the counter. She struggles out of her jacket and into her work smock. "I'm so sorry I'm late, Mimi! I didn't sleep very much last night. You can dock my pay for the difference."

"Don't be silly, Miyako," Mimi says, voice remarkably even. "Everyone has a late night now and then."

Taichi's eyebrows are rising dangerously high, and, in the first uncharacteristic display that afternoon, she lunges forward to shove the door closed, kicking him out at last. He skips down the steps, pausing at the next set that lead to the building's basement, and shakes the bell he'd stolen on his final departure. Gritting her teeth, she turns around, back to the door, and looks into the bakery interior, gaze landing on her waitstaff. The girl is still babbling excuses, unnerved and anxious, while Mimi's eyes narrow at the sight of the small mark on the woman's neck, just under her left ear, visible as she ties her long hair up into a bun.

_The devil._

Well, then. Time to raise the stakes.

Mimi resumes her confident collected self, undoing the knot at the back of her lace-lined apron. "I'll be back to help close," she tells Miyako. "Ken's in the back, so if it gets busier just ask him to come help out here."

"We'll be fine, don't worry," promises Miyako, her color fading to its normal rosy hue. She finishes winding her hair into its messy updo, tucking the loose strands behind her thrice-pierced ears. The action, instinctive, only brings Mimi's gaze back to that odd mark, and her eyes clear.

She picks up the purse she always stows under the register and undoes the clasp, fishing for her keys. "We've sold out of the coffee cake and Danishes, and there's only three more slices of the gluten-free chocolate tart. See if you can clear them out, will you? And please refresh the water jugs. And the—,"

"We got it, Mimi," Miyako interrupts gently, grinning.

She flashes the smallest hint of an apologetic smile. "Right. I'm off. I'll be back. Soon." Mimi leaves without waiting for Miyako's curious remark about the stiff wording, already berating herself for being so easily frazzled. There was no room for awkwardness here. She couldn't let him still rile her.

Marching doing the stoop to the sidewalk, she keeps her chin high and gaze straight ahead of her, ears prickling only slightly at the sounds from the bar entrance below the stairs, even despite a distinctive Daisuke shout over a chorus of laughter. There's a loud crash, some scuffling, and finally the shriek of a low bass so heavy the upstairs windows start rattling.  _Her_  windows. As she comes a stop just beside her parked car, she hears the bakery door open and footsteps sound down the stairs, turning swiftly underneath in the direction of the bar. Ken's knocks are a modest, lost cause, but Mimi doesn't bother staying to see the outcome, unable to risk what else will finally snap if she has to see the devil's eyes one more time that day.

Slamming the door shut, and finally cocooned in the solitary refuge of her precious car, she searches for her phone with one hand while the other shifts the vehicle into gear. She abruptly reverses to the rear right and then out into traffic, cutting off a smaller two-door that had been steadily approaching from behind. Ignoring the honking, she finds the number she'd been looking for where it always is, at the top of her favorites list. As soon as the line clicks, she's speaking. "Jou, don't hang up. I want a copy of the last four years of his sales permit, and I want you to send me pictures of that one time he filed for ban— _I said don't hang up! Kido!"_ Cursing, she slams her thumb on the redial button at the same time as her heel slams on the gas, the car hurtling through the red light at the intersection and swerving, dangerously, to avoid the right-of-way minivan entering her lane.

This time, he manages a word in before her tirade. "Stop calling me about your insanities at work, Mimi!"

She raises her voice, "I wouldn't have to call you so much if you would just do what I ask you to do the first time!"

"You mean hack a municipal tax system to plot the slow financial demise of your most irritating enemy? Do you have any idea how you sound right now?"

The car swerves again, and she swallows the grunt in another angry click of her tongue. There's a shuffling sound from his end, and then his voice resumes a more manageable, respectable flatness. "You said yourself you came back from France to make a fresh start, so here it is. Whatever he did today, you need to learn to take the high road, all right? You can't control everything."

Despising his tendency to use logic in all matters, she snaps, "This from the world's foremost authority on undiagnosed neuroses—wait, no, don't hang up, I'm sorry— _dammit_!"

With a cry she tosses the phone into the passenger seat, gripping the wheel with both hands as she spins into a parking lot. Bypassing the empty spaces, the car instead screeches to an uncomfortable, lurching halt just inches from the curb outside the building's side entrance. She kicks the door open, emerging with the strap of her purse clutched in one hand and the keys in the other, which she tosses at the security attendant who has already started his hurried approach to her on sight of the gleaming vehicle peeling into the lot. "He's still in a meeting, Miss Tachikawa, I don't think you—,"

"Please keep it running, Iori, I won't be long."

"But, Miss Tachikawa, I—,"

"Thank you, Iori," she interrupts, and waits at the door for his reluctant admission, his badge activating the lock with a smooth click. She pauses inside the lobby to flash him a warm smile at the elevator bank, and only when she's inside the carriage does she fix her attention on her appearance. Smoothing the collar of her shirt and adjusting the pressed crease in her skirt, she pats the frayed strands back into her braid and around her small ears, puckering her lips with small even smacks to test the gloss. She takes several breaths, each successively longer than the last, and holds the final inhale until the sense of calm has anchored deep at last.

Calm, calm, calm. She is calm. She is poised. She is her father's daughter.

The elevator doors open, and her smile widens on reflex—until the man on the other side, upon meeting her shocked gaze, slips his hand behind his back. "Mimi," he greets guiltily, but it's too late.

Her eyes narrow. "What's that?"

"Hm? Oh, honey, are you sure you couldn't have called first? I'm just heading into an afternoon of—,"

She's bending over, peering around him, but he's turning his body around, too. "What are you hiding—is that—Daddy, is that coffee?" Then her face drains, mouth forming a perfect O, as betrayal floods through every bone in her body. "Daddy. Is that  _his_ coffee?"

Father and daughter remain silent, locked in an unblinking gaze. At last, Keisuke opens his mouth, chin dusted in a thin peppery beard, and bushy brows lifting in a pitiful frown. He starts, "I'm…," but then trails off, blinking up at the ceiling to avoid her searching gaze, "…yes."

"I'm going to be sick," and she's bending over, dry heaving, and Keisuke steps forward to hoist her up under the arms, leading her to a bench in the hallway, "Why, Daddy, why—,"

"Mimi, do try to pull yourself together—,"

" _I_  make coffee, Daddy! I make coffee for a living!"

"I've told you: every Monday, I have lunch with Mayor Takenouchi and coffee to-go on the return to City Hall, and, honey, you know how important my routine is to me—,"

She protests, hands gesticulating wildly, "But you wouldn't have to change a thing, just go  _up_  three steps instead of  _down_!"

Keisuke appears to be struggling with a serious moral quandry. "Honey, his is…better."

Mimi's mouth falls open, breathless. She heaves, "Have you ever liked my coffee?" And then, without waiting his blank face to find a suitably less offensive expression, "What about Mama?"

"Oh, your mother hates the smell of coffee—," she lowers her head, "—that's why he keeps that box of tea bags for her behind the whiskey."

She's on her feet, jaw wound in a small scream, and Keisuke's tutting, finally recovering enough of his senses to remember he is, in fact, the parent. "Mimi, please, restraint! We're in the public's eye—,"

"This isn't over, Daddy!" she yells back, stomping to the elevators once more.

He's shaking his head. "If you two could just learn to be reasonable…. I mean, you could—you could share, or make it a themed experience, really do up the entire lot, or maybe let him brew the coffee and you can serve the—,"

She only screams again, the shout cut off by the elevator doors closing, its lingering echo making him shiver. He looks down at his cheap paper to-go cup, the kind of pale, brandless variety that wouldn't have alerted anyone but the most loyal patrons of its provenance. He turns the cup around, curious to see how she distinguished this from any of other plain ones he'd find in the staff kitchen even this very minute. And then, just under the lip of the cup, snuggled between the lid, is a small mark.

T, 43.

M, 6.

… _Oh_.

Keisuke's sigh is the sort wherein one's entire set of life choices is gravely reconsidered, and the one memory that emerges larger than all the others is that fated, leisurely stroll he'd taken after the first Monday lunch. Trying out a new takeaway coffee hadn't required much thought at the time, likely on account of the unexpectedly pleasant meeting he'd had with the then newly elected mayor. He remembered having been unusually nervous the entire weekend prior to the lunch, for it was the first private conversation he'd had with the ever reserved and overly formal Takenouchi Toshiko since he'd phoned to concede his defeat to her in the mayoral election. And awkward it had been, but the longer they'd conversed the easier it had been to do so, and he'd left the restaurant that day feeling confident that a new era in the town had finally come to pass and even a new hope for another campaign in the next term.

In the end, Toshiko had been reelected, with Keisuke, having declined to run against her the second time, publicly pledging his full endorsement—much to the vocal dismay of his daughter, who had always been a very sore loser. He ought to have found Mimi's zeal endearing, especially when leveraged on his behalf, but in all honesty…she was a real little fright sometimes. Still, he and Satoe had raised her to believe she could conquer the world. Why fault her for trying?

With another sigh, Keisuke savors the last sip of his coffee, relishing each drop, and disposes the cup in the hallway trash bin outside his office. Once inside he closes the door quietly before taking his seat at the corner desk and picking up the phone, shoulders slumping forward in defeat.  _The things we do for our children_ , he thinks.

It rings twice, and when he finally answers it's with words not directed at Keisuke at all. " _I said, turn it down_!" There's some murmurs of protest, and sounds of glasses being put on a counter and a tap running somewhere nearby. Finally, Daisuke returns to the line. "You can find out our hours by just Googling the name, you kno—,"

"Daisuke, it's me."

"Oh, sorry, sir. How's the city? Still up and running?"

Keisuke rubs his forehead. "Can I speak with him, please?"

"Sure thing," says Daisuke. He glances up into the dimly lit bar room, catching sight of Taichi wiping down the booth by the entrance with far too much concentration, his gaze set on the window facing the sidewalk towards the cafe entrance. The younger man clears his throat, tapping the corded phone onto the bar railing, oblivious to the possibility that the echoing sound would be quite unpleasant for the person on the other end of the line. "Boss, it's the A.M. for you."

Taichi accepts the call, directing Daisuke to finish clearing the tables and check on the only patrons currently present. Never mind; it was still early. "Sorry, Mr. Tachikawa, I'm all out of the coffee but I'm getting a shipment in tomorrow."

"No, actually, that's what I'm calling about." He takes a deep breath. "She knows."

He just barely manages to turn his instinctive, barking laugh of delight into an exaggerated cough, clearing his throat, "What…oh, no…."

"Cut the theatrics." Keisuke shakes his head and leans back in his chair. "I don't want to drag this out. All good things and all that." His voice is now carrying a watery quality to it as he continues, "They tell you, you know, they tell you that parenthood involves a reorientation of priorities, that there will suddenly be nothing you wouldn't do for this new person you conceived and raised and threw out into the cold world one day, and they're right, son, they're very right, these wise people—,"

Taichi straightens, meeting Daisuke's curious glance. "It's…it's only coffee, sir."

"Good coffee," corrects Keisuke affectionately. "But never mind. What else defines fatherhood but sacrifice?"

Jesus, this family. "Love, sir?"

Keisuke only grunts, lost in his thoughts, and Taichi decides he can't restrain himself anymore. He stammers through a rushed goodbye, then returns the phone to its wall-hung cradles, laughing. "We're counting this as a win."

" _You're_  the only one keeping count," mutters Daisuke. He returns to the counter with the empty glasses he'd collected from the tables. "Well, except her, I guess."

"Mouthing off while you're still in the shallow end isn't a move I'd make."

"She's good at what she does!" A vein is beginning to throb, so Daisuke tries another attempt to redirect the focus. "Plus it got you that promo crowd, didn't it? And look—," Daisuke gestures before them to the nearly empty bar. "Wait, no, don't look."

"Just go put the sign up." Taichi slides the paper towards him. It's a flyer for apartment rental listings he'd picked up at his gym's bulletin board, but the back had since proved useful, now sporting his handwritten dictation of his earlier announcement of the half-priced drinks promo stenciled in chunky block letters.

Daisuke reviews the scrawl, debating whether to point out the obvious. "It's…big."

"So to be legible."

"I would think that maybe, you know, spacings between the letters could also help on the, uh, the legibility?"

"I didn't see you offering to make the sign earlier," snaps Taichi, weirdly hurt.

Daisuke grumbles, taking the flyer. "You're always mean to me after your breakups—okay, okay! I'm sorry!" He ducks, miming fear that could just as easily be real, though Taichi hadn't so much as raised a finger, only took a single step forward. It was enough, though, and now Daisuke's scrambling up the small stairs to the sidewalk, lowering his guard only a little at the scent of warm delicacies, fresh from the oven, wafting from the upstairs window. He stands to gaze up at the cafe from the bottom of the stairs, mournful, wistful, and more than a little bit hungry.

He considers this shift in the world order more carefully. On the one hand, she is the only person who can make Taichi act like this, much to the latter's loudly-touted and oft-repeated chagrin. But, on the other hand, Daisuke isn't quite sure that maybe there isn't something else still there.

A shadow flickers above his head, and he glances up again. In the left-most cafe window is now a new sign, daintily lettered and exquisite in its penmanship:  _Take a selfie in the bar downstairs and tag us to receive a complimentary mini fruit tart of your choice. While supplies last!_

Okay. Maybe not.

* * *

**then**

* * *

He wasn't an idiot. Oblivious, sometimes, to be sure, and tunnel-visioned more often than not, but he'd grow out of that at some point in his life—or, worse, grow into it. It's the latter that Sora had started complaining about of late, suggesting the events of the past few weeks were sharpening a side to his competitive edge that hadn't done much for his attention span. He'd laughed her off by insisting ever accomplishing the latter had long been shot, a claim he only realized far too late really put the argument in her corner. Well, he was who he was. And today he was about to be seriously fucked if he couldn't work his way to the top of this list.

Three people were in his way.

He started with the nervous looking applicant in a tweed sweater vest and modest checkered bowtie seated to his left, his hair parted and combed so thoroughly he swore he could count each individual strand. Mouthing along to the notecards he kept reskimming, the youth caved at the note binders that he pulled from the shoulder bag at his feet, each successively bigger than the last. By the time the last one was hefted onto his lap, the man sprung from his seat and launched down the corridor in the opposite direction, muttering about extra study time.

That was when he turned his attention to the next target. Seated to his right was a short young woman in a very smart white blouse and navy pantsuit who had lathered so much antibacterial lotion to her hands no binders would stick, let alone distract her in the same way. So he returned his materials to the knapsack, coughed loudly, and then began rummaging through the bag while sniffling. He sneezed, audibly cursing at the lack of tissues he'd forgotten to pack and the sanitizer he wasn't able to locate. A few more sneezes and one excessively vocal phlegm-clearing gasp was all it took, and then she was up and darting to the restroom, trembling in her simple brown loafers as she arched a path as far out of his contagious range as possible.

He checked his watch, straightening in the chair, and zeroed in on the last one.

"Mint?"

Her glance latched first onto the red mint tin he held out to her from across the hallway where she sat opposite him. She surveyed the offer coolly before drawing her gaze to his face. Her eyes were hazel, flecked in golds and greens, with an intensity that evaporated all thought. Long lashes blinked once at him, in an exaggerated slowness, accompanied by a smile that stretched across her small mouth and curled into a charming dimple in her left cheek. When she shook her head in a polite decline, he swore he smelled honey and shortbread in her hair.  _Oh, fuck_.

"Thank you, but no," she said, crossing her legs. Her pink pumps clicked on the tiled floor in the movement, and the sound swung him firmly back into the present.

"You sure? I mean, these interviews are generally in pretty close quarters—,"

She shook her head and he retracted his hand, pocketing the mint tin. "You'll just have to try harder to get rid of me."

He sat back, sneaking a quick look at the door at the end of the corridor to gauge how low to keep his voice. "That? No, that was me trying to find my notes. But I guess some dust made me sneeze a little," he consented when her brow arched at the casualness of the poor cover up. He concentrated hard on the wall behind her head to keep from buckling at the sight. "Doesn't seem like the cleaning staff get to this corridor much."

"No, it doesn't."

"Makes sense why, though, right?"

The eyebrow arch returned. "How do you figure?"

Torn between his plan and the sudden desire to keep her attention on him, he leaned forward, "Listen, if I were you, I'd really be trying out for an internship with the higher ups. Just the fact that we're down in this random basement office should tell you what they all think of this guy. Don't get me wrong," he added when he detected a twitch to her smile at the assessment. "Starting from the bottom means you can only go up, sure, but you don't strike me as the kind to be satisfied by an unchallenging environment."

She directed a studied glance at the closed office door. "And you are?"

"Don't worry about me," he said, flashing a grin. "I can make the most out of anything."

"Apparently," she said. She sat back, folding her hands in her lap, and appeared to be weighing his words. "I do have a few applications out. I plan to have several options to choose from."

"I believe it."

"I don't believe you know anything about me," she said with a laugh.

"We could fix that," he said. Her breathy intake gave him all the encouragement he needed. He leaned forward again, "There's a party tonight at my friend Michael's. We could get din—,"

The door opened, and both of them looked up.

"Mimi?"

"Daddy," she greeted brightly, tone transformed. Taking up the brown paper handled bag by her chair, she strode forward. "I know you're in the middle of interviews, but I wanted to drop off your lunch." She kissed his cheek. "Don't work too hard, okay?"

Opening the bag slightly to take a tempted sniff, Keisuke sighed throatily. "Um, yes, okay—well, I should probably put this in the fridge until after the…uh…." Locking stares with the only person left in the corridor, he frowned. "Weren't there more of you?"

"Good morning, sir," he said, springing up, hand outstretched. "Yagami Taichi."

Keisuke accepted the handshake, still confused. "Yes, right, well…come in then. We should have…plenty of time to talk."

At this she cast him another glance—which, to Taichi's steadily mounting dismay, her father saw. "Oh, you two know each other? Classmates?"

"Uh—,"

"Yes," she answered smoothly, voice like cold silk. "Taichi's friends with Michael."

Keisuke's lip immediately curled. "I see."

She patted his arm, "And Michael has excellent taste, right?"

Taichi watched as Keisuke's lip attempted to uncurl, identifying with the struggle.

"Well, let's not dally," said Keisuke, stepping aside to gesture into the office. Taichi slipped inside, feeling her close watch on him. A glance back confirmed it: this time, however, her eyes were narrowed onto him in something far too concentrated to be reassuring. This shift in her temperament was as disarming as the first, but carried another kind of tenor this time. He didn't know how to explain it, a sense maybe, that she was calculating something he hadn't caught up to yet. Was that what had made their earlier exchange so intoxicating, an equal match to match? How had he missed who she was? Why could he never keep his stupid mouth shut?

"Just a moment, Mr. Yagami," assured Keisuke, and before Taichi could insist he use his given name, the door was shut, and he was left in the cramped office.

To avoid worrying over their conversation or anything else she might be tattling on him, Taichi placed his bag beside the chair opposite the desk and surveyed the room. There were no windows, and more file cabinets than should fill a regular office, suggesting the possibility that in fact this was little more than a converted storage room. Still, Keisuke had made the most of it, adapting to the circumstances with a few small personal touches (a potted succulent, two picture frames, and an inspirational poster of a tortoise with stars painted on its shells, reminding its readers to follow their own stars, however slow and steady; Taichi suppressed the reflex to gag). Between the frames and the old, creaky desktop computer was a plaque: Tachikawa Keisuke, CPA, City Manager.

"Sorry about that." Keisuke returned, closing the door behind him. He placed the lunch bag on the desk and took his own seat, waving at Taichi to sit down also. "I went to look for the other applicants," he began cheerfully, "but looks like it's just you. A walking lucky charm, aren't you?" Taichi merely forced a queasy smile, still unnerved by the odd family encounter. "Anyway, I reviewed your resume." Keisuke pointed to the papers laid out on the desk. "Quite impressive."

He snapped back, at last, into interview position, reigning in the emotions. "Thank you, sir. I think my experience shows a good range, too," Taichi added.

Keisuke nodded. "Certainly, certainly. That's what college is for, exploring your range. But what's next, for you, I mean? Where do you see yourself after graduation, in five years, or ten?"

Good. Start out with the rehearsable question. He was ready for this. "I'm looking into business school, first, maybe a joint program with law or international affairs. I'd like to be part of the new wave of entrepreneurs looking to connect public and private infrastructure—,"

"I'm going to stop you there," said Keisuke, hand raised. "All that, I gathered from your resume and application, and the first round of interviews. Let me put it another way: where's next for you?"

Taichi curled his fingers tightly in his lap, a gesture he knew Keisuke couldn't see. "…Sir?"

Keisuke tapped the papers again. "This isn't the application of someone enthralled by the inner workings of municipal governance—love it as we all do," he added with a good-natured laugh. "I guess I'm having a hard time imagining how a summer internship with my office is going to set you further on your specifically…non-mid-sized-town aspirations." He paused, but Taichi remained unusually silent. So he added, "A lot of the students who come work for me are locals with local ambitions. Nothing wrong with that, mind you; that's what I have. Just…help me understand your choices here."

His thumb traced the small scar just under his right middle knuckle. "It's important for me to be near family this summer."

Keisuke nodded, knowing not to prod further. "There would be a few long nights, and some weekends."

"That won't be an issue. I intend to make the most of the experience being your intern, sir, I reall—,"

He interrupted, pink-faced, "I'm not the mayor, son, you don't have to postulate to me."

"You've never thought of it?"

Keisuke stopped, eyes wide. "…Me? You really think so?"

"Oh, absolutely," Taichi nodded, enthusiastic, and slightly delirious at the imminent possibility of all his plans, for once, aligning properly. "I've actually been following your work," here he patted at the bulging knapsack full of carefully assembled notes and binders, "and I've been thinking a lot about what you could do, if you were interested in laying out the groundwork for a future campaign."

Keisuke sat back in the tatty office chair, still stunned. "Huh." But then he caught sight of Taichi trying to extract one of the thicker binders, and he intervened, stomach growling. "Bring it with you next Tuesday, all right? We'll talk over breakfast. You like breakfast, Taichi?"

"I like coffee," he said.

Keisuke stood, extending his hand, and they shook on the offer. "Then you can bring the coffee."

Moments later, Taichi stumbled out of the office, promising to meet back next week after the end of the term, and stopped his enthusiastic gait only when he'd rounded the corner. He needed his phone; he had to call Hikari—

"He only likes you because you cheated." She was leaning against the wall in the hallway before him, the floor still oddly empty for the mid-morning. The sight of her still there, still waiting for him, came like a rush, but the steady, narrowed way she glared at him didn't make him want to play along, however their quick banter had felt before.

So he stammered, struggling to regain his cool footing in the aftermath of extreme lows and highs, "I could say the same to you." Her face defaulted into confusion, and he bit his tongue. "You know what I meant," he muttered .

Catching on, she tossed her head back. "I want to know who my daddy spends time with. This is his reputation he's putting on the line for you, you know."

"We don't know each other."

"I know that you don't remember me." His face didn't change, so she stepped forward. "Halloween, last year, you were dressed like a walking cellphone with a bat head—," ("The Batmobile," recollected Taichi very suddenly.), "—and I was supposed to be the Sugar Plum Fairy except someone stole the plum tarts from the dorm kitchen, where I had been very obviously making them all morning for my costume."

He shifted to the side, ducking out from under her accusing finger. "And you think that was me?"

"Oh, I  _know_  it was you, because you asked me what I was making, and I told you why and what for. Then, mysteriously, they disappear." She flung her arms out, miming a lost expression, her mouth in a tight, pretty scowl.

Taichi was starting to lose his patience, annoyed most of all by her rambling. "Okay, first of all, there were a lot of people going in and out of the communal kitchens all day, not just me. Plus, no one likes plum tarts enough to willingly steal any, and, finally, who would put a real perishable on their body for a full night of partying?"

"That's just it," she protested, eyes flashing,  _fuck, she looks beautiful angry_ , "I couldn't go out that night if my costume was incomplete, because that would have automatically disqualified me from all of the contests I was planning on winning, something that the plum tart thief  _fully_  knew."

He rolled his eyes and pushed past her. To his irritation, she followed. "That's what you're upset about? You think I cost you some a stupid costume contest?"

"No, I still won," she announced, and the confusion made him pause mid-step. He glanced at her, mouth open, and she preened, "I went as Clara. Just had to tweak my original costume."

"Well, congratulations."

They turned another corner. "And then, after the costume party, was the post-awards party." ("We're still doing this? How long are your stories?") "It was a real big one, too, as they always are, and towards the middle I was walking back from the bathroom when I heard someone in a bat head telling their date, ' _We could go back to mine if you're hungry. I just bought this really good plum tart._ '"

Damn. "But you won."

"But you don't remember me."

It was an odd remark, and the longer he tried to understand it, the more she seemed to realize what had slipped out, and everything else that might be implied. She stepped back suddenly, pink-faced in much the same way her father looked when caught in an awkward moment. It was uncanny, and he wanted to laugh at it. He wondered if her entire family was as performative as this.

Lips pursed, she declared after a moment, "Lucky for you, I am great at not holding grudges."

"Says the one stalking me through a secluded hallway to tell me about a years-old  _alleged_ crime." She said nothing, pink cheeks deepening to red, and he swallowed the grin, biting at his lip instead. He looked back in the direction they'd left and considered his options.  _Fuck it_. "Listen, let's just start over, okay? We're going to be seeing each other a lot over the summer, and all cards on the table: I really do want to do a good job for your dad, and I'm not planning on letting him down." He held out his hand. "Truce?"

She considered it, scrutinizing the gesture.

"And," he said, leaning forward, "I promise to never come near another one of your plum tarts, ever again."

Rolling her eyes, she accepted. "Truce."

They released each other quickly, uncertain now how to move forward. For better or worse, and ultimately unable to bear the awkward silence any longer, or risk losing the weight of her hazel gaze on him after that moment, he took another gamble, clearing his throat. "So…maybe see you tonight? At your, uh, your boyfriend's party?" Her eyebrow flared up again, and he cursed inwardly at her reaction. He had half-hoped he'd heard their conversation wrong earlier. Well, whatever. A truce was a truce, and he really did need this summer internship to go well. That was the deal, being here close to home this year, postponing his real plans. He had to make this work. So he persevered, betting everything, "It should be fun. I heard there's going to be a band."

"Ah," said Mimi, as though only just understanding his meaning, "Michael's not my boyfriend."

_Oh, luck, you fickle lady._

Taichi shouldered the bag closer, fingers tightening on the strap. "Yeah?"

Mimi shook her head, chin tilting to the side, grinning cheerfully as she tossed her hair over her shoulder, marching forward. There was that honey and shortbread scent again as she passed by. He knew then and there he'd never get that sensation out of his head. "But, yes, I'll be there. My boyfriend's in the band."

_A fickle, fickle lady._


	2. now

* * *

**now**

* * *

He catches the slip of paper just before it careens across the dashboard and into the early morning breeze. His other hand on the door frame, he turns the ticket over, confusion doubling upon seeing the paper bears no official markings, only a cursive swirl reading "Share the lot." He checks the other side of the paper, then glances over the windshields of the other cars lining the block, all empty, save this one. Shaking his head, he tucks the note in his coat pocket and crosses the street, pausing to search through his shoulder bag for the keys. The door unlocks just as footfalls sound up the steps behind him.

"Morning, Ken."

"Good morning, Miyako," he greets, holding the door open for her. "How was your week off?"

"Oh, it was amazing." She removes her jacket as they enter the small adjoining kitchen, hanging it on the coat rack near the door. Taking his when he hands it to her, she arranges the coats carefully, continuing all the while, "My eldest sister came to visit, so I got to see my niece and nephews. I hosted them at my apartment all week, which was so cozy and fun, reminded me of how we grew up. Did I ever tell you about the time when I—,"

"How old are they now?" Ken interrupts, handing her an apron. He tugs a thin hairnet over dark hair, careful to tuck his long bangs behind his ears, and proceeds to the sinks to wash his hands.

"Oh!" She brightens. "Two, four, and five. Aren't those the sweetest ages? I still can't believe how much they've grown! It goes by so fast. Taichi said that when his—,"

Ken yanks the freezer door open, blocking her from his periphery vision. "Did you, uh, get to the wholesalers before your break?"

"Most of them," she answers easily, still oblivious to his crisp deferrals. "Mimi said she'd deal with the coffee supplier herself. She's so smart. I want to be just like her. Sometimes I feel I'm already—,"

The force with which he sets the tray of overnight sourdough rounds onto the immaculately sanitized steel counter jolts even his own nerves, making Miyako gasp in mid-ramble. "Sorry," he offers, wincing at the reverberating metal echo, "it slipped."

He flexes his fingers for extra effect, guiltily avoiding her confused stare, and peels back the plastic wrap, examining the integrity of the dough. He can feel her gaze studying him throughout; for all her chattery reputation, Miyako is defeatingly intuitive. She pulls her long hair back into a ponytail, then wraps that into a tight, high bun. "All right, Ken. Are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

"Not sure what you mean," he murmurs.

"Uh-huh," she says, unconvinced. "Now, Ken, we've been co-workers for—what, two years?" ("Ten months.") "And in those years, I have never not known you to get in your own way." She pauses here to let him speak, but he won't look up from his work, molding the hard dough into a flat round for even cutting. With a loud sigh, she marches to the swing hinged door separating the kitchen from the café. "Two months, Ken. Two months until the shop's anniversary. The perfect, most auspicious occasion. That's when you tell her."

His chin juts up, lips parted, dark eyes rounded in shock. "I—?"

She only holds up two fingers, mouthing the number once more. Then she smiles, a warm and earnest grin that makes her whole face radiant. "We both deserve to be happy, don't we?"

It's the confidence with which she announces it, or perhaps the smile that accompanies the declaration, or even the sheer lunacy of the statement entirely, that holds his tongue, and his hands, frozen for almost a full moment after she's left. He feels his palms go slick, unnerved, and puts the cutting knife down. Taking a step back, he pulls off his hairnet, teasing fidgeting fingers through the thick hair over his temple, rolling his neck back to stretch out the stress.

"Do that again, but in slow motion."

Ken turns to his right, glancing at the side door to the back staircase. "Hi, Daisuke."

Outfitted in a faded gray punk rock T-shirt, a cotton red unzippered jacket, and black jeans rolled up past his ankles, Daisuke strides forward, hair a mess and eyes swollen from another sleepless night. "I wish you were as happy to see me at the start of your shift as I am to see you at the end of mine."

Ken's already moving to the largest filtered machine in the kitchen. "We're a little behind today, sorry."

"I can wait," says Daisuke, characteristically cheery despite the hour. He walks about the room with a pesky curiosity, leaving Ken to tidy the mess he makes in his wake, returning cups to their rightful place and readjusting jars of frosting. "Where's my girl?"

His jaw twitches at the affection. "She'll be in soon. We're looking for a new coffee distributor."

"Oh, yeah? Well, you could always try ours. The A. M.'s obsessed with it—or, was, I guess…. I know it's only been two weeks, but, God, I miss that guy's business. You know, you could've paid off the parking tickets we get in a year  _thrice_  over with the amount he used to spend on our coffee."

Ken's not quite sure what Daisuke's beaming smile is prouder of: the rather interesting financial tidbit or the evidently newly discovered vocabulary word. Experience tells him it's likely the number of tickets, what with Takeru's driving habits making Mimi look professionally trained and Daisuke's confused idea of what constitutes a compliment. He chooses to redirect the conversation, hoping to avoid a prolonged detour into whatever trivia website his friend had wandered into, leading regrettably to what would now be word of the week. He starts, "I thought Mimi got a ticket this morning. I found a paper stuck under her windshield."

"Doesn't she always park there?" remembers Daisuke, sniffing a lidded cannister.

"A lot of people overnight their cars on this block. Hers was the only one with a note." He retrieves the slip from his coat pocket by the door and hands it to him, relieved to have something interesting enough to keep Daisuke from poking about the kitchen, a habit at limitless odds with Mimi's particularity. "Take a look." He scrutinizes it far more than such a small sheet deserves, and Ken remarks, amused, "It's not magic, Daisuke."

"…Maybe," he consents after too long a pause, as though determined not be shown up by a sheet of paper. "Still weird though."

"It's probably a one-off."

"Or a prank."

The coffee machine hisses, beginning its slow work. Ken moves to check the pot is appropriately placed, mindful of any spillage. "You're saying this is your boss's work?"

"Not his handwriting," Daisuke shrugs. Then adds, anxious to clear up any confusion, "Anyway, I like to think of Taichi as more of a guidance counselor." He tosses the paper onto an empty corner of the pastry work space, while Ken pours out fresh coffee into two large pink paper cups, trying his best not to smile.

"Should that explain why you're up here instead of cleaning up?"

" _I'm_ the one who opens and closes the bar," Daisuke points out smartly, "and therefore the one who sees any quote-unquote mess. He usually dips out early, depending on where he's staying that night. Like last night, Sora called and h—,"

Miyako's voice interrupts them, shouting from the other room, "Ken, I need help! There are foot tracks all over the—,"

The coffee cup goes flying, splattering across the counter, and Ken only barely manages to fling himself over the scones he'd been working on, shielding them from the offending drips. He spins, back to the edge of the table, arms flung protectively, and yells, "Daisuke!" before gasping when a kick to his ankle bone makes him buckle over.

"Shit!" Now at eye-level on the floor, Daisuke crawls towards him, finger over Ken's lips. "I'm not supposed to tell her anything, so shut up! She'll hear you!"

"She already did!" Miyako's fingers slide around the back of Daisuke's shirt collar, yanking him to his feet in an astonishing show of strength. "What's wrong with you?"

"Inoue! You're here!"

She shoves him, still furious. "I'm always here! Why are  _you_  here? You know you're not allowed in the kitchens anymore!"

He leaps out of her reach, but she only advances on him, shoving between each word. "Will you quit it? I was just leaving—," Daisuke ducks around the counter, then makes a dive for the swing door.

Ken, having returned the batter to the fridge for the moment, rushes after them into the café. "Watch the chairs, watch the— _no_ ,  _don't use the chairs_ —,"

"What is going on here?" At the door to the café stands a young woman in a parking meter officer's uniform, her cap tucked under one arm and a notepad clutched in the other hand. Her pristine, precinct-mandated boots tread forward, steps even and confident, while her dark eyes scan the three frozen individuals before her in quick assessment. "You know I can hear you from across the street?" she demands, voice shrill.

Daisuke moves backwards, shimming out of Miyako's lurching grasp and Ken's reach. He stops when he's safely ensconced behind the woman's sturdy stature. "Arrest them, Jun. They're being mean to me."

"When have you not deserved it?" she snaps back.

"Oh, arrest yourself—,"

Ken interrupts before the siblings can squabble further. "Is everything okay?"

"You tell me," she says. "I got a tip in saying there's a car parked outside in violation of this zone's restrictions."

"Not one of ours," protests Miyako. "Ken and I walk here, and that one doesn't even drive."

Daisuke ignores her angry finger pointing, gaping at Ken instead. "Mimi's ticket!"

"What? No," and Ken shakes his head, confused, telling him, "that wasn't a ticket."

"But it  _was_  a prank," he cries, bug-eyed and borderline delirious. "A sign! A mark!"

" _Daisuke_ —,"

"You're saying," says Jun loudly, "that Mimi hasn't moved her car since yesterday? It's been there all night?"

"It always is," insists Miyako, becoming distressed at the level of confused chaos in the room. "She lives upstairs—,"

Jun's mouth thins. "Does she know that street parking is not assigned parking?"

The tenor to her words isn't very kind, to which the younger woman takes offense. "It should be! She works hard!"

"That's not how it works, Inoue—,"

"Daisuke, I swear to God, if you don't stop interrupting, I will tell Dad."

"What's Tai—oh, wait."

Ken's eyes widen. "Jun, who called you?"

She looks at him, distracted, and then her shoulders slouch forward, "Are you kidding me?" Ken doesn't want to say, uncomfortable with even suggesting that any person could have a character flaw. He only shrugs, forehead wrinkling in sympathetic concern, while the other two look between them in confusion. Jun offers no further explanation nor does she ask any more questions. She stuffs her cap back over her head, grumbling under her breath. "Move the car back in the building's lot until I sort this out, okay? And keep it down in here," she points at all of trio in equal turn. "Don't put the rest of the neighborhood in misery just because you all have to be up so early."

The jingle-less door slams shut, and Miyako immediately starts her own questions. "What was that about? What's going on with Mimi's car?"

Ken relents to an explanation, detailing the events of the morning. When he arrives at the great mystery of the note, Daisuke's nearly ready to teeter off his feet from fidgety, sleep-deprived excitement. "That's it! That was it! Someone—someone else wrote it—but then he left early, he must have put it on the car then—,"

The door swings open again, and the trio freeze. Mimi places a large bag of coffee beans on the counter, unperturbed by the others' awkward staring. "Coffee distributor," she announces cheerily, "acquired. Here's a sample to try today with customers. Although," and she pauses, eyes brightening with the sudden strike of inspiration, "maybe we should organize a promotion? The social media one a few weeks ago was such a huge hit, right? Should we follow it up with another event?" Still, no one speaks. Her eyes clearing, she glances over them in turn, shrugging off her pastel green blazer and laying it on the counter next to the beans, so as to leave her hands free to fix the tendrils of hair teasing out of her high ponytail. "Bad idea?"

Daisuke straightens. "I feel I should remind you I'm the competition."

Her haughty chuckle makes him relax, while Miyako and Ken exchange wary glances at its ominous octave. Giggling, Mimi grasps Daisuke's cheeks and squeezes. "You've always been my favorite competition, Daisuke."

His inability to discern between the lines makes Ken wince on his behalf. He frowns, or attempts to frown, as Mimi pokes and prods his tan cheeks. Mouth pursed, he manages to begin to ask, "…because I'm the one Taichi spends most his time with, or—?" before Miyako cuts him off, perhaps saving his life.

She announces, "Mimi, there's been an incident."

"I'm not sure I'd characterize it such terms," says Ken.

"Jun was here," she continues, raising her voice and inserting a touch of assured authority for extra measure. "She said she got a complaint about your parking on the street instead of the building's lot."

"Well, of course she did, Miyako," responds Mimi, releasing Daisuke's face after a few more heavy pats. "I spoke with her outside just now. It's all sorted."

"You're not…concerned?" asks Ken, treading with care.

She smiles and drapes her blazer over her forearm, then picks up the coffee bag again. "Only for my lack of consideration! With all the deliveries I do, street parking was more convenient." She shakes the bag, the beans rustling deliciously. Even Daisuke's attention shifts at the attractive sound, remembering he never quite finished his usual full cup that morning. "Anyway, I shouldn't have bent the rules, even for myself, as Jun so kindly reminded me."

Ken squints as Miyako begins blinking rapidly; Daisuke cuts through the tension, ever direct. "You know you're talking about your car, right?"

"It's just a car," she repeats with a flourish of her right hand.

"Didn't you and Yamato used to fight over leaving his gigs so you could follow the sun to make sure the car was always in the shade?"

Mimi laughs again. "Daisuke, your imagination!"

They stand in tense silence after she disappears into the adjoining kitchen, humming under her breath. Daisuke weighs his options, his insomnia kicking the conspiracy tone into higher gear. "All right, either she already did something terrible or is about to do something fantastic." He rounds on Miyako, startling her. "When's the last time you saw Tai?"

Her face flashing a dark red, she snaps back, " _You_  work for him—,"

"— _with_ —,"

"Maybe we should finish setting up," offers Ken, noting the way the corners of Miyako's eyes crinkle with extra pressure.

"That's my cue," says Daisuke, stepping out of the way as Miyako makes a last-ditch effort to yank him back.

"You made half this mess—!"

"And you made the other half, so apples and pickles, as they say."

Her face contorts, " _Who_ —?" but Ken's grabbed her arms to hoist her back and Daisuke's already whirled his way into the kitchens, trotting to the rear staircase.

Daisuke pauses at the top to look back at Mimi, who's prepping a pink takeaway box with a variety of thawed and fresh pastries. She picks up a cinnamon twisty just as his stomach growls, earning him a sly smirking glance in return. "Heading back out?" he asks, one hand resting on the stairwell wall.

"My eyes are up here, Daisuke," she reminds him, and he tears his gaze from the box, grinning.

"Sorry," he says at once, then adds, "about the ticket."

"It wasn't a ticket," she corrects, voice remarkably even. "You tell your sister I've got nothing against her doing her job. I appreciate the reminder. I've been taking my place around here for granted."

He watches as she neatly creases the top of the pastry box and seals the sides with her monogrammed circle stickers. "What, uh, what place is that?"

Mimi picks up the box and braces it against her hip, retrieving her blazer from the coatrack. "Go home, Daisuke," she instructs so sweetly that even he gets the hint.

"Right, right." He casts another woeful glance at the pastry box, stifles a yawn with a mumbling remark she doesn't quiet catch, and then bounces back down the staircase, catastrophic morning now concluded—for himself, at any rate.

She waits until she can hear the door to the basement bar close, counting until she's sure his footsteps have faded away from the rear entrance, then shoves the box back onto a metal table and hurries after him. The staircase bottoms out perpendicularly into a narrow corridor with only two ways out: into the bar's rear stockroom, which Daisuke had earlier entered, she knows, and outside to the loading dock behind the building. The door to this exit is equipped with a small square window, which Mimi peers through, balancing herself on the toes of her ankle boots. It's a standard lot, with an alcove for the building's dumpster, a ramp that hugs the side of the building, and a few tenant cars—and one truck, belonging to the flower shop across town, parked underneath a small sign naming this the first floor tenant's delivery vehicle spot.  _Her_  floor.

"Yagami," she hisses. She turns around, back to the door, and glares ahead of hear at the bar's backroom entrance. A second later, she's upstairs in the kitchen, retrieving the takeout pastry box. Through the swing door she can hear Miyako's low voice quizzing a demure Ken and stops herself from entering the café. Another glance at her wristwatch later, she's back down the basement stairs, teasing the door open with her shoulder as she balances the takeout box with one hand and searches for her car keys with the other. She nearly drops both just as her fingers curl around the slim metal of the key ring in her purse when a car in the rear lot lays on its horn.

"What the f—," she cries, heart in her throat.

The driver's door pops open, and from the car emerges first a floppy blond head of hair. Her heart stays high, lodged tight, but her mouth still twists into an honest, candid smile.

She steps quickly down the short steps and approaches them, holding her pastry box before her. "There are kinder ways to say hello, such as, I don't know, 'hello'."

"The joy in that being…?" responds Takaishi Takeru, standing behind the wide open car door with one hand braced against the door frame.

Mimi stops when she reaches the front of the car, smirking. "Pick up duty?"

"My only give in this give-and-take, so not a bad rap, all things considered."

She opens her mouth to respond, but then the backdoor opens once more, and Daisuke spots them. He stops when he sees them, together, his face white with a mix of alarm, guilt, and sleep deprivation.

"Daisuke—," Mimi starts to say, immediately recognizing the panic on the young man's face, but he's already scampering down the steps towards them, yelling all the while: "I had nothing to do with it, I promise—I told you I wasn't going in on his pranks anymore, and I meant it—," he gulps, "whatever she's told you, babe, I really didn't—,"

Takeru's expression doesn't even budge; his blissful gaze merely turns easily from Daisuke's manic fidgets to Mimi's exasperated sighs. "Should I ask, or—?"

"No," Mimi answers at once, before addressing the other, "Sleep it off, Dais."

"It's off! It's off!" and he yanks open the passenger door, diving inside to safety.

Takeru's nose crinkles at the bridge, thin lips pressed into a tight smile, "So it's going to be one of those mornings. Cool." He looks between her, the takeout pastry box, and the flower shop truck, before settling back on her once more with a knowing smile that feels far too perceptive for Mimi's comfort. "I have to admit, things like this make me wonder about Dad's spider senses, selling the bar to Taichi instead of us. Like he knew you'd want a good game to sharpen these killer instincts of yours."

"Your dad," says Mimi, squeezing the box a little tighter, "would have definitely sold me the bar if I'd been looking for a space here then. He should have."

"Ah, but then, where would I be, unemployed fiancé pestering me at home all night?" She doesn't answer, smiling with her mouth closed, and Takeru corrects his mistake. "Just, uh, try not to get convicted, okay?"

"Mm-hm."

Takeru glances inside the car, then tilts his head towards Mimi. His blond curls flip listlessly over his eyes, their twinkling blue shades a mirror she finds difficult to look into for long. "Anyway, better take this one home."

"Don't work too hard."

Boasting his best joke voice, he mocks, "Nice to meet you, pot, I'm kettle."

She hangs her neck, groaning, "Oh, my God, you did not just say that—,"

"Listen," he laughs, "I'll say anything until I get your reply."

Her nose wrinkles, lips pursed. She'd been bracing for this the entire conversation, but it's still got her on edge. "I know. I will—I mean, I just need to sort out a few details." She pauses, then heaves a breathy chuckle, "Always something coming up here, you know."

"I do," says Takeru. "Daisuke talks in his sleep."

"Can I pay you to double agent for me?"

He stands up rigid straight for emphasis. "Mimi, you know that I will do anything for you, for free,  _twice_ , but let's you and I be real fucking honest where either of us rank on Daisuke's top-ten-to-die-for list."

She grumbles, hands on her hips. Her glare glides over the top of his head and across the street to the basement entrance. "Does he even offer him health insurance?"

Takeru grins, "He's not a bad boss."

"He's not exactly challenging his managerial side with the staggering number of one full-time employee."

"As opposed to, what is it, two full-timers?" She sticks out her tongue, and Takeru leans over the door to kiss her cheek. "That seat's yours, Mimi," he says, keeping his voice low, "whatever  _you_  decide. Don't let him decide it for you."

She doesn't respond, not immediately, and they've already turned out of the parking lot by the time she's thought of something to say. So she walks slowly, at first, following the sidewalk around the building, then picks up her pace when she gets to the street. Checking her watch once she's inside her car, she chews her lip over the calculated time left before she'd really need to be back at the café for the big prep, eyes lingering on the entrance up the front of the shop. Play the game, huh?

Even with her habits, the drive takes less than ten minutes, an unusually empty early morning marking the day ahead. Ominous, perhaps, but Mimi's never been quite good at blatant, in-your-face signs, and she's already working this move a few steps behind, preoccupied as she is by the startling way Jun had accosted her on the sidewalk less than an hour ago. Today was meant to be a victory, a coffee day victory, and instead—"We're ending this," she tells herself, squeezing the car into a far too narrow spot on the block to his apartment building. She fixes up her ponytail, tugging her blazer sleeves down, and retrieves the pastries from the passenger seat. It's six floors up, and four doors down from the elevator bank, until she stops in front of the paneled entranceway to an apartment labeled "Kido" in stark, block letters.

Gritting her teeth, she forces her mouth into a perfect, award-winning smile, and rings the bell. It takes Jou only a minute to answer, ever prompt with his hospitality manners, and always up for his own routines. Mimi knows this all too well. She knows, as he does, everything about Jou's life, including his most dubious of living choices.  _One game at a time, Tachikawa_.

The door cracks open, revealing Jou in plaid pajama bottoms and a simple grey crew shirt.

"Good morning," she says, beaming.

His face drains. "Mimi—," and he gasps, slamming the door hard but forgetting his leg is in the way. His eyes water, mouth open in a silent moan of pain, but he only blinks it back bravely. "What, uh, what are you doing here?"

She holds up the pink takeout box. "When's the last time I brought us breakfast, Jou?"

His memory begets nothing, and he's astonished at the realization. "…Never?"

"Jou!"

"Am I ever allowed to answer you honestly?"

She shoves the box into his hands, overlooking the impulse to banter with him. Instead, she continues, her usually charming demeanor now cutting a forced, manic tenor, "I'd love a cup of tea with breakfast, too."

He doesn't budge, exhibiting quite a show of strength for his lanky stature, sized as it is against her petite vengeance. "Great, let's go get some."

She keeps her tone smooth. "Why should I pay someone else to boil water for me?"

A bark of deep, sarcastic laughter echoing from inside the apartment makes Jou close his eyes, defeated, and Mimi's crease into lines so thin they nearly disappear into her rigid anger. Her hand slams on the door, pushing it back, while Jou wrests the door forward with the handle, initiating a battle of wills worn down to sheer muscle memory.

Mimi gasps through gritted teeth, "Do—you have—any—Darjeeling?"

"Fresh—out," hisses Jou. "Sorry—,"

"That's—fine," she grunts, "I prefer—English—breakfast—,"

"You— _lie_ —,"

The door pulls back suddenly, causing Mimi to stumble forward, face-planting into Jou's broad chest. Her foot slips and he grabs her about the waist, hoisting her up again, while Taichi easily lifts the pastry box from her startled hands. "Cheers," he says, shaking the box, and walks away from them. "That was English breakfast, right?"

"I actually don't have anymore tea," confesses Jou.

His smile is sly, lips pressed thin. "Coffee, then?"

Mimi's arm jerks forward and her fingers smack Jou in the nose, knocking off his glasses at the unexpected impact. She lunges for them in the same second, gasping, and forces them back on his face as she pats his cheeks frantically in an attempt to mimic physical care, "Sorry—sorry, reflex!"

"Jou?" calls Taichi, unbothered by the scene.

"Y—yes, coffee's good— _ow_!"

Mimi retracts the calculated second strike of the side of her hand on Jou's forearm, moving to slick back a loose tendril of hair from her forehead. She steps into the apartment, and Jou, fixing his glasses properly, latches the door shut after her while Taichi turns around, box open on the counter and an almond pastry in his hand. "None for me, thank you," she says despite his pointedly not asking.

He retrieves another coffee mug to add to the one already on the counter, then stuffs the rest of the sweet into his mouth, mumbling, "How's the café?"

"Oh, we're excellent," she responds at once. "How's the bar?"

"Also excellent."

"How about that."

"Fantastic."

"I'm sure."

"As am I."

Jou, wincing for an entirely different reason now, clears his throat. "I'd prefer a fight to whatever this is, honestly."

"No, you wouldn't," and they glance at each other, startled at the unison response.

It's Mimi who breaks first, taking a pause to recollect her focus. "Although there was one thing."

"One?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

"This morning."

"'course."

"Stop," interrupts Jou, striding forward. He pushes Taichi away from the sink, taking the stove pot expresso maker from his hands and wresting back authority of his kitchen. Pointing into the living room, he continues, "Just do whatever this is over there and save me from having to listen to it."

Taichi shifts his gaze back to Mimi, teeth pulling on the corner of his smirking lip, "Hear that, Tachikawa? Kido wants something else to listen to."

The older man gives a start, his cheeks a deep red and a yelp trapped in his throat. Taichi laughs again, slinging an arm around his friend's neck. "You make this so easy—," he teases, while Mimi stalks towards them, irritated, though she'd never say so, by the affection still between them.

"Apparently someone complained about my car," she says, raising her voice.

"What, about your parking job?"

"You know what it was about," she retorts.

He shakes his head and he releases Jou at last, ruffling his shortly cropped hair. "Not really?" The smoothness of his reply makes her pause. She studies him carefully. He's still in an old sleep shirt, some washed out sweatshirt bearing the logo of a car rental company, and orange shorts she's not quite sure aren't swim trunks. There's some stubble growing into a vague suggestion of a beard under his chin, and his sideburns appear to be coming in unevenly. Her silent staring still unnerves him more than he cares to admit. He leans back against the counter. "Should I be charging you for this?"

Exhaling slowly, she retorts, "Who'd take up that offer anymore?"

"Careful, now." He clicks his tongue. "Flattery like that leads to the kinds of fights Jou doesn't like listening to."

"Leave him alone—,"

("—leave me out of this—,")

"You mean how you leave your car alone, hours and hours over time?"

Her gasp is almost comical. She staggers back, clutching her chest with both hands, " _I knew it_! I use that car for deliveries, Tai! I need that space!"

"You have a loading dock at the back of the building, same as me. Be professional—,"

"Like you're being, using her van as some kind of calling card for these stupid pranks?" She rears back a few steps, making a show of looking through the apartment from their vantage point in the kitchen. "I assume she's in on this, too?  _Sora_! Sora, darling, where's he stashed you?"

"Jesus," he interrupts, humor lost, "keep it down—,"

" _No_." It takes everything in her to keep from stamping her foot petulantly, though her fingers still curl into tight fists. "Don't you  _dare_  tell me to be professional about my business."

("—don't mind me, just going to move these glasses out of your…reach—,")

Taichi's tone drops, moving behind Jou as he trots between them, securing precarious items in advance. "When have you ever once in the entire time you've been in that building not tried to interfere with how I run mine?"

("—let's move the ceramic magnet of the baby's footprints into the cupboard here—,")

"Are we still pretending  _that's_  when this all started?" she laughs angrily. "You've had it out for me since the day Daddy fired you."

"You know, you should really talk to your parents more." Taichi returns to the stove to restart the coffee process, a move that makes Jou tense up at the rough way he handles his kitchenware. "You might learn a thing or two of what actually happened that summer."

"I learn enough from yours." She straightens, crossing her arms over her chest. "Just last month, Susumu told me  _he_  was the one to teach you how to fake your way through job interviews. Like father, like son, isn't it?"

Jou is frozen, arm outstretched towards a little Eiffel Tower magnet on the small fridge. "What?" she demands of him, taken aback, but he shakes his head quickly and looks with alarm at Taichi, who's face is twisted into something like surprise, or even confusion. " _What_?" she repeats, frustrated.

He's slow to answer. "You've…you still talk to my dad?"

His suspicion embarrasses her, as though he's caught her demonstrating the kind of clingy pining she had once so feared her friends believed she secretly held. She hates this thought most of all. Sympathy is one thing; misapplied pity, entirely another. So she bristles smartly, acutely aware of Jou's stare, "You talk to  _mine_."

Taichi doesn't take the challenge, nor does he correct her. Instead, he says, after a long moment, in which he seems to struggle to make the words make sense, even to himself, "I haven't talked to my dad in two years." She knows he's spoken words, or otherwise a close approximation of something like words. But they hold no meaning to her. They couldn't. Not about Taichi, not about Susumu. Before she can think of a response, he corrects himself, "Or, I guess, he hasn't talked to me." It's the way she looks at him that makes him want to leave, afraid of what might happen, what else he might say, if he stays. "Spot's yours," he mutters as he passes by her on his way out the kitchen, and her hand reaches for him without her even thinking to move it when she hears the grief he can't keep out of his voice.

But then she remembers herself, and him, and what they aren't.

She makes to follow him anyway, until a hand settles on the small of her back. "Let her deal with it," says Jou, voice soft. He pulls her back, arm around her waist. "Come on, have something to eat—,"

"Stop," she says, sharp, and he does, letting go.

Mimi stands outside the apartment a minute later, back to the door. Her hands are empty now, hanging at her sides. The sun peers through the trees lining the block, warming her face. Since when was winning this unfun?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually meant to be a lot longer, but had to split it up to rework a few continuity concerns for the long arc. Apologies for the awkwardness.


	3. then

* * *

**then**

* * *

The night everything changed nearly slipped by her.

To be fair, Takenouchi Sora had spent the better part of that first few weeks of summer organizing and adjusting to her new schedule, stacked as it was towards the goal of earning a place in the country's most lauded graduate arts program. Everything had been set: her extracurriculars, organized between the community service kind and the physically active team-building kind; her part-time job as a freelance designer, building a substantial portfolio of polished works; and her academics, which, contrary to what everyone else thought about her career aspirations, did matter. As Sora believed, being a creative meant seeing with clear eyes. She took schoolwork seriously, no matter the subject, because this disciplined her visual thinking as much as her understanding of her place in the world. That, and it helped make the case to her parents, one a renowned and prolific scholar on his own merit and the other a business owner turned rising star in the city council. She could never have presented her dream career to them without proving she had a solid plan for successfully carrying it out to prominence and acclaim. Besides, no one had a work ethic like Sora's.

Now this wasn't entirely true. It was just that her friends didn't share her worker's enthusiasm about every little thing; most of them tended to be a little more selective on where to dedicate their attentions. Until that semester, she had counted in this category Taichi, who now hadn't been able to dedicate his attention to anything but his summer job, possessing and displaying a hurried preoccupation that was worrying her more for how suddenly it had manifested than what it actually was.

This new interest hadn't bothered her all that much at first. She had been busy and hadn't noticed the depths of it. For one, her schedule was promising to be quite grueling, with the summer coursework she had elected to take in order to meet her electives early. She had thought that the emptying of campus during the break would have been a small reprieve from its usual bustling busyness, but the assumption proved unfounded. Studying at the library rarely made sense now, given the time it took to get to and from campus from her various classes and clubs, and the non-metered parking wasn't always available. But then Taichi had started his internship, and with him gone for morning football practice and afternoon internship now, she'd taken over his workspace, which was really the small second-hand desk in the corner of the room he'd been renting in a flatshare a few blocks from campus. It was cramped, sure, but it had plenty of light and private parking for her trusty two-door coupe, meaning she could walk to campus for a quick meeting or library trip and not come back to a ticket. She could even overnight her car there, and did, more often than not, lately.

Their current pattern wasn't an exceptional one, and had begun, in truth, long before.

Indeed, Sora could not recall a single exam since junior high school that she hadn't been over at Taichi's cramming for in the days prior, quizzing him on flashcards as he protested the severity of her diligence, as it seemed that her preparations were exceedingly more challenging than the actual tests. She'd claimed she was doing him a favor; Hikari always countered with admiration for her devotion to lost causes; Taichi always had a pillow handy to smack his little sister's shoulder with; Mrs. Yagami always hollered at them to keep their noses to their books if they wanted any dinner that night; and Mr. Yagami always begged them to save themselves while they still could.

Sora loved being with the Yagamis. If she could have made up tests to study for, she would have, just to hear the laughter that seemed to electrify the life in their tiny and humble two-bedroom apartment. It was the kind of life at devastatingly plain odds with the sterility of her own home; she couldn't remember the last time she and her parents had sat down at the table together for a meal. Ambition didn't make for much warmth.

That was why his announcement of his summer plans in the month prior had taken her by such surprise—well, not the plans per se, but the how. Because he had gone to her mother, without even mentioning the idea to her first, expressing in that act her parents' kind of ambitious, calculating play that put off thinking of others, like her.

Sora had yet to bring this bothersome fact up to him; she was as hesitant to discuss perceived slights as he was oblivious to see he'd ever even committed any. And to be honest, she wasn't sure how she would have reacted had he spoken to her first. He knew, better than any one, the complicated relationship she had with her mother. Maybe he'd wanted to spare her the tense drama over it, given the numerous freelance project deadlines she'd been working on at the time. Or maybe he thought she'd have talked him out of it—not just the request to her mother, but the entire endeavor of a political career. And he would have been right to assume this, because she knew him better than most, too, and knew that that path wasn't right for him. Not her mother's brand of it, anyway. She'd have ruined him, the one good thing in her life, like she always did everything Sora cared about.

So she'd stopped it. And maybe that, she thought much afterwards, was why she hadn't seen what was coming next, because she'd thought she'd ended it.

But what would going back again do, even if it were possible to imagine an otherwise?

Sometimes even now she'd catch herself remembering, rehearsing, recalling as much as she could, beginning with the look on his face when he finally arrived back at his flat share, nearly an hour after he'd promised he'd be home. She was already sitting up on his bed when the door opened stretching her arms around and under her bare legs. Her eyes thinned at the tightness of his movements, diagnosing the cause of his mood almost instantly. "Practice didn't go well?"

"Oh, it went," replied Taichi, but despite the muted anger, he didn't slam the door behind him, merely shut it gently. He slipped his stiff shoulders out of the team zip-up athletic outerwear, careful to hang the prized possession on the hanger over the back of the door. His hair was still a little damp from the after practice shower, and he'd swapped the jersey shorts for dark jeans already, too, kicking off his sneakers and dumping the gym bag by the door. "Just not with me."

Alarmed, she lowered her knees to a crossed-legged position, hands in her lap. "You're benched?"

"Apparently I'm 'lacking commitment,'" began Taichi, "since I was late to three of last week's practices—don't start."

But her jaw was already hanging open. "Three? Taichi!"

He pulled back the rolling desk chair, undoing his laces. "I have a job, Sor."

"An  _internship_. And how early does a CPA get to work?" she protested. Without giving him a breath to even try to defend himself, she continues, heated, "Tai, this is your team—you love your team—,"

"I can't ride on that for the rest of my time here."

"That scout was wrong—,"

"We're not talking about that again," he brushed her off, voice sharp enough for her to listen this time. She didn't answer, not willing to engage when he was bratty to her. He seemed to realize this, walking back on his tone of voice with his next, softer words, "I'm sorry. It's been a long day."

"And frustrating," she offered.

"Tell me," he said, and it took her a moment, then, to realize he wasn't merely confirming her statement, but asking her, of her frustrating day. She glanced at him, silent. It was when he did things like this that softened her, and in the days after that night would make her feel so much worse.

She waved a hand at the desk he was slouched in front of, her drawing books and a tablet neatly stacked beside a thick textbook. "I got stuck on this one problem set, so I took a nap."

"A woman after my own heart." And he dove into the bed next to her, plunging face first into the spare pillow. The mattress sank under his weight, and she slid ever so susceptibly towards his hip, her knee knocking into his side without her intending it. Face still buried into the pillowcase, he swung an arm around the top of her leg where it lay near his, possessive. "Staying over?"

Sora patted his hand. "Nope."

Taichi groaned, "Typical!"

"Relax, you're coming with me. It's Catherine's surprise going-home party, remember? We're combining Thursday night with her party, at the off-campus bar."

With everything else hidden from her, she saw only the tips of his ears turn a dark, dark red, and it took everything she had then not to laugh. "Sorry, can't hear you," he said and pressed his face even further into the pillow, scrunching up the corners to stuff into his ears.

"Yes, there's that future statesman."

He flipped her off as she slid from the bed. His arm flailed around a bit into the empty space she'd left, and he flopped over onto his side to see her approaching his closet. "Uh-uh," Taichi called out. "Your choosing her side means losing borrower's privileges."

Sora rolled her eyes, picking through the scattered selections, all mixed up by now. "Where's that skirt I bought for Koushiro's birthday?"

Taichi's eyebrow danced. "You don't buy clothes for  _me_ —whoa!" He ducked and dipped, smoothing his hair back from the near miss. "A belt? Really? My face is all I have now, Sora!"

"The hits just keep on coming for you, don't they?"

"Yuk, yuk, yuk, hilarious." He watched as she retrieved the black leather skirt and a cream-colored T-shirt from from a pile of other clothes she'd left here, a stash she'd smuggled in deliberately. The amount of it, by now, surprised her, and to her dismay caught Taichi's attention then also. "Did you move in and we just never talked about it?"

Sora kicked off her knee socks, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Mom would kill me if I brought anything like this home," she reminded him.

"She remembers how old we are, right?"

"It's different for me," she muttered. "And another reason why it's good you're not interning with her."

"Why kick me when I'm already down?" he complained, throwing his head back. She guiltily turned away from him, changing from her lounge shorts to the skirt while he was distracted by his wallowing. "Listen, I get that your mom is intense. But you have no idea what I'm dealing with without her. I mean, Keisuke's great, but the daughter—and God, his wife—,"

"Annoying, too?"

"No, like— _hot_."

Her head snapped up, aghast, and Taichi burst out laughing. Irritated, she finished dressing and stood up. "You're disgusting."

"I'm only stating facts."

"I'd recommend checking that impulse before your big political debut."

"Let's not get that carried away," he said, tone striking a distinctly lowered quality.

Sora glanced at him, head lilting to the left as she studied his face, as though he were that easy to read. And he was, most of the time; but then there were moments like these, when he wasn't. And the idea he'd ever keep a part of himself from her—

She sucked in her breath, smiling, "You're saying Mr. Tachikawa's not modeling the right career choices for you, after all those rumors about how he'll eat literally anything with sprinkles on it?"

"Those are true, by the way." He stood up, bending over at the waist to pull off the long-sleeved crew neck he'd had on. They switched, her pinching the sweaty garment between two fingers with a scowl, and him taking the dark green button-down she held out for him, pausing ever so briefly to appraise it. He held it up before his chest, frowning. "We really sure this is my color?"

"Worried what Cat will think?"

He didn't quite buy the bait. Instead he just muttered, more to himself, "I don't want to look like I went goth over a one night stand."

Sora brushed the tone off this time. "We all could use a personality tune-up now and then."

He laughed, "Well, aren't we flying high and fast with the zingers today," and swung the end of a sleeve at her knee, snapping the fabric lightly over the top of her thigh before she could get fully out of the way. "What's with the good mood? I though you said your day was frustrating."

"My problem set was frustrating," Sora corrected. "My day wasn't all that bad."  _Now_  is what she left out.

He pulled the dress shirt on, one arm at a time, bringing the collar loose about his neck, and rolling the sleeves up just over his elbows. He frowned a little while concentrating on the buttons in the cuff, attempting to work them together with one hand, so she stepped toward him, fastening them herself. He grunted gratefully when she was finished, ignoring how she rolled her eyes, and stood before the mirror over his closet. He bent his elbows up and turned to the side, appraising the width of the folded rolls on his sleeves, a gesture that made the muscles in his arms that much tauter. She sighed, "Can we leave before your reflection drowns you?"

"Now, that's a whole lot of lip to show someone making you look this much hotter by association."

"Oh, is that what we're doing?" she exclaimed, and he grabbed for her, but she ducked, laughing, and found her purse hanging off the back of his desk chair. "Come on, we have to pick up Koushiro on the way. And you're driving."

Taichi groaned, "Seriously?"

"I drove last party—,"

"—I don't remember that."

"Curiouser and curiouser."

It was in her car, him settled behind the wheel and her in the front passenger seat, and a begrudging Koushiro resigned to his dubious weeknight choices in the backseat, that Sora reminded everyone of the newly imposed rules to their Thursday night traditions. "No karaoke, no open tabs, and no using me to ditch covering your turn at the next round, Taichi."

"You can't signal out the designated driver."

"I can when the designated driver always seems to find his way out of being so," she raffled back at once, and he defaulted.

"I won't, I can't. I've got work tomorrow."

"Wait, is that why you've not been making it regular to practice?" asked Koushiro, looking up from his phone to peer at Taichi's face in the rear-view mirror.

Sora rounded on Taichi, who deliberately avoided her gaze, both of his hands on the wheel. "He knew before me?"

"He's on the team, Sor."

"To be fair, she does live with you."

"You lost your side-choosing privileges after shifting us for that convention last weekend."

"You could have come along."

"We're not tethered to each other, you know. Please, let me hold onto some dignity."

"Quite a thin fraying thread, isn't it?"

The car swerved, sending Sora launching into the side door and Koushiro into the back of her seat, both of them grunting in surprise, as Taichi pulled into a lurching stop. "Oh, look, we're here," he said in a lilting tone, ignoring the glare she shot him in response. He stopped Koushiro for a minute when they got out of the car, motioning for him to hang back.

"What's wrong?" asked the younger redhead.

Taichi shook his head. "Not wrong. Just, uh—if it comes down to it, you can still—?"

He didn't let him finish, or rather, he didn't need him to. Koushiro merely nodded, silent, and Taichi smiled appreciatively, immediately turning the small smirk into a wide grin when Sora yelled at them to hurry up before they ruined the surprise.

The off-campus bar was about as full at it ever got; in truth, it wasn't very popular with the more happening crowd. Even so, it boasted loyal customers, mostly those who passed on the traditional weekly gatherings from class to seminar to fraternity and beyond, building up a sort of regular sea of faces that seemed to satisfy the grumpy bartender enough to not mind some groups now and then making the space the location of these impromptu parties.

Taichi didn't mind such gatherings much himself, but tonight hadn't been something he was looking forward to. It wasn't that he had an issue running into exes; that wasn't exactly a realistic hang-up for him to have, truth be told. It was that he had an issue running into this one. Seeing her at games those first few times after had been hard enough, but then he'd gotten distracted—intentionally so, admittedly—by the effort and time it had taken to land his City Hall internship. He told himself that at least now he'd have something to say he'd be up to over the summer, instead of thinking about where he might have been if he'd told her yes all those months ago, but he wasn't much for nostalgic regret, and he didn't particularly like the idea that she nearly changed this about him. Taichi didn't like the idea of anyone changing him, but him.

Sora steered them to a small corner of a booth where a few of his and Koushiro's teammates had gathered, one of them immediately wrangling them into their current round of beers. She relented, pleased, chatting her hellos warmly to the familiar faces, while Taichi tried not to look too visibly guilty over meeting people he knew he was letting down at practices these days. That was another problem, but he really just needed things to settle down a bit, settle in at home, at work, at—

"Hey," he said suddenly, eyes fixed to the bar counter, and turning to Koushiro. "Who's that up there?"

Koushiro needed a minute to figure out who Taichi was referring to. "Looks like Kido Jou? Works in the campus bookstore on Tuesdays and Fridays. His eldest brother was the captain of the debate club. He lives with—,"

"No," waved Taichi. "The other one."

Koushiro frowned, while Sora squinted. "That's…oh," and he nodded with recognition, "that's Takaishi Takeru. First-year, but plays first-string on the basketball team. Works in the writing center and for the campus's alternative paper, plus he's running for class representative against Motomiya. The first-years seem to find Takaishi the more appealing candidate; they say he's personable. Hard to tell what people think about Daisuke—,"

"Yeah, yeah, okay, but—," and he paused, unsure, "—you don't think he sort of looks familiar?"

"Um, there are a lot of blond guys here, I guess, but—,"

"Izumi, I swear to God—,"

It dawned quickly, when it finally did. "Oh.  _Oh_." His face took on a decidedly paler tinge. "Should we—?"

"I'll take care of it," muttered Taichi, putting his hand in his jeans pocket to search for his phone.

"Wait, but are we sure he's—,"

"Beers are here," Sora declared, not realizing she was interrupting.

Taichi and Koushiro immediately separated, the former biting his tongue in a forced smile. He kept glancing at the blond kid at the bar, distractedly confused by the odd way the sight of that hair seemed to nag at him, and almost missed the question Sora was lobbing at him. He grabbed some mixed trail mix out of the bowl on the table, stuffing his mouth to avoid having her see through him too easily. "Huh?"

"I said, do you want to go for a game of cups? Some of the guys have set one up in the bac—,"

Taichi coughed suddenly, swallowing a particularly plump raisin whole.

"What—," gasped Sora, alarmed, but he waved her back, nearly rolling out the booth in his struggle to sit up.

"She's here," observed Koushiro.

Taichi choked out, "Where—can't—bathroom—?"

"Basement, second door."

He clapped a heavy hand to the side of Koushiro's head, stroking his ear in gratitude, and stumbled away from them, ignoring Sora's annoyed calls, and pushing through the crowd that was gathering en masse at the bar entrance for Catherine's imminent arrival. He managed to make it halfway down the stairs just as everyone burst into cheers over her surprised laughter, and he almost second guessed himself. He pulled the phone out when he got to the bottom of the staircase, frowning at the notifications, and stepped inside the single occupancy restroom, turning to lean a shoulder against the door after he closes it behind him.

"Occupied," said the voice from his daymares.

Taichi hung his head, still clutching his phone. "Of course, this happens to me," he muttered, then began to turn around when she shrieked an incoherent protest. He froze at once. " _What_?"

She continued yelling, "What do you mean, 'What'? Why else am I in the bathroom! Don't turn around!"

He lowered his hand, mind blank. "You're not actua—,"

The toilet flushed, and he immediately shut up.

Her giggling confused him even more. "No, of course not, the door wasn't even locked," said Mimi cheerily, voice emptied of the bloodcurdling pitch it had had only seconds earlier. Taichi peered out of the corner of his eye, hesitant, and found her standing before the bathroom mirror, a square bit of bathroom tissue folded into a triangle as she evened out her lipstick. She winked at him through the mirror, deliberate and coy, and he caught the prank at last. His back slumped too visibly in relief, and she laughed, "You are so easy."

"Don't believe everything you hear," he said, and she made a gagging face at the flippant comeback. He sank one shoulder against the bathroom door, glancing over her reflection in the mirror. She wore a plain black jumpsuit, strapless and heart-shaped over the front of her chest, a thin gold necklace fastened tight over a slender throat. The high ponytail made her neck seem even longer, and there were a few curls there, at the nape, that distracted him for the way they moved when she lifted her chin to stare back at him through the mirror. "What—uh, what are you doing here?" She waved her lipstick tube, and he rolled his eyes. "I mean at this bar."

"This place always does college night on Thursdays."

"Yeah, I know," he shook his head. "It's just that this particular Thursday night is a surprise party."

There was a thundering cheer from over their heads, and they both looked up to the bathroom's roofed ceiling, then at each other. She pursed her lips. "Oops." When he merely shrugged back in muted agreement, she appraised him stiffly. "Why are you hiding from the surprise?"

"Ex…fling, I think? What label comes before labels?"

She made another O, wiggling her brows. "Easy, indeed."

Taichi relented, not liking to make too many jokes at such expense, "No, Catherine's not like that."

"Oh!" Mimi's eyes widened. "I think I know her! French girl, right? My boyfriend set her up with his lab partner last October."

Taichi groaned, swallowing a sigh. Well, that fucking explained that.

"I sort of thought it was going to be an odd pairing, actually. Her type is definitely more the star athlete kind of thing." At this, her pause became dramatic, her muted gaze latching onto his reflection with vague regret. "Sorry."

"Yeah, no, it's fine," he admitted, because in truth it was. "She was definitely popular with my teammates."

"I mean, yeah, that accent—," "—those legs—uh, yes, the accent." He winked at her, and she wrinkled her nose, making a face back at him.

She didn't seem willing to let him off with such a distasteful joke. Her eyes narrowed on his shirt. "Are we sure that's your color?"

"You suggest I don't look good in green?"

"Mm, you are pretty jealous about how much better at your job I am."

"Yeah, why  _are_  you always hanging around your dad's office?" Taichi asked, redirecting to a pattern he'd noticed over the past few weeks. A very, very annoying pattern. Getting time alone with Keisuke has been hard enough the first week, what with all the onboarding tutorials and meetings he'd had to attend with the other City Hall interns. But it seemed anytime he had the opportunity to get a bit closer to his mentor, to plot out strategies for leveraging the new summer gig to something more ambitious, the way Councilwoman Takenouchi had advised him to start planning for in their earlier conversations, she just found a way to pop up. And just like that, Keisuke's attention would be snapped, lost as it ever was, to whatever came out of his daughter's mouth. No wonder he'd been stuck in that basement office for so long. How was anyone supposed to get anywhere with such helicopter family members?

Mimi leaned closer to the mirror, bending over the sink with a hand balanced on the side. She applied her lipstick coat delicately, taking the sort of detailed care that might have proved her expert penmanship, except he'd seen her doodles and knew the truth. He braced for a snappish answer; instead, she said simply, "I've brought my father lunch every day since I got my driver's license. It's our time, always has been. Interns come and go, but favorite daughters are forever."

He began with a quick comeback, but the image this detail of her life wrung up stilled his tongue. It felt like an intrusion, an odd sort of intimacy, to stand there in a barroom bathroom with its grimey walls papered over in layers of concert announcements and posters and graffiti, watching her put on her make-up while listening to her take the mask off of her life.

"Can you be an only child and not the favorite?" he wondered aloud after a moment.

"You've never asked your girlfriend that?"

Taichi stood straight, "What?"

Mimi shrugged, making a gesture as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Sorry, is Sora not your girlfriend?"

He felt his face grow hot, itching under the collar of his shirt. "What do you know about her parents?"

"Plenty, trust me," continued Mimi, unaware of how his voice had changed then, its defensive, protective quality darkening the browns of his eyes. "Councilwoman Takenouchi is such—well, let's just say I wouldn't want to be her favorite, either. Pretty sure she's not capable of—,"

"Ever try shutting your mouth about shit you don't understand?" Taichi glared, reaching for the door.

Mimi stopped, her lips still only half-way coated. "What's your problem?"

He scoffed, " _My_  problem?"

"You heard me," she snapped back. "And that attitude isn't exactly nice, either."

"Wow—,"

"See, Yagami, that's exactly why I hang around Daddy's office so much. You can't trust people who put their seniors on pedestals just because they're elder. Same applies to parents." She capped her lipstick tube, returning it to her purse, and used the perfectly angled nail of her index finger to retouch the colored line outlining her bottom lip. "Parents are human, sometimes even more than their kids. What's the point in treating them like they're faultless? It makes no sense."

His fingers tightened around his cell phone, surprised, only then, that he's still holding it. A glance to the dim screen returns his attention, briefly, to the name that flashes across it. "Guess not," he admitted after a minute.

Finished with her lipstick touch up, Mimi turned her attention to her ponytail, adjusting strand by strand for the perfect impression of casualness. "Disappointment in one's parents is something to set our clocks by. The first sign I've got a cold coming on is if I miss my weekly feeling of parental betrayal. One time, Daddy had gone home to eat lunch with Mama, and I just sat there in that basement hallway for, like, two hours, because it was pasta carbonara day, and my parents are weirdly turned on by egg-based foods. I remember one Easter weekend I caught them i—,"

"Okay, please, stop. I need to be able to look your dad in the eye tomorrow," Taichi complained, shuddering, and Mimi just squawked loudly.

"Who cares about you? I have to look them in the eye every  _day_ —,"

"You could solve that by just not going home to see you parents every day, you know. You are in college."

Mimi stopped, hands suspended above her head, and hazel eyes wide as saucers. She looked horrified. "Why on earth would I not want to see my parents?"

Taichi had trouble keeping a straight face then. "Weren't you just going on and on about parental betrayal?"

"Yeah, and if you don't water your plants every day, they die!"

"What about cacti?"

" _My parents are not pricks_!"

He burst into laughter, bending at the waist, fingers combing through the sides of his hair. "Jesus, I really can't keep up with you."

She continued working at fixing her hair to distract herself, visibly flustered, and evidently deeply thrown by the idea that there were people in the world who didn't get on with their parents, favorite or no favorite. "They might not be worth constant deference, but they're still needy."

"Maybe just you three are."  _Codependent_  is what he wanted to say, but wisely thought better of it after noticing the way she tugged violently at a particularly thick tendril.

"Daddy said you wanted this internship to stay close to home, too," she fired back accusingly.

Taichi should have known the gossip would have extended past City Hall doors. Keisuke and his damn sugar-induced tendency to jabbering. He really needed to stop bringing in the sprinkle doughnuts with the morning coffee. Maybe he was contributing to the madness of the basement. "It's more that it's easier, overall, to be around this summer," was all he was willing to offer as clarification at that point, but it seemed to pacify her nonetheless.

She nodded at his reflection in the mirror. "As opposed to next, I'm guessing?"

"Well, next would be the summer after graduation, so yes." He leaned back against the door, slipping his phone back into his jeans pocket. "I'm definitely getting out of here after that."

"Graduate school or law school?"

"Business."

She made an O with her mouth, and he realized she was whistling; there was another roar of the crowd above their heads in the barroom upstairs, heavy gaits pacing back and forth quickly. He thought he heard Sora's distinctive yelp, the kind she made when she was winning a game, and he glanced above to the ceiling, wondering how much time it'd been since he came down. "Interesting. Not a lot of municipal politicians go the corporate route right off the bat. I mean, Daddy does have that one friend of his from boarding school—Inoue, I think? I can't remember—,"

"I don't want to do municipal government," interrupted Taichi, intervening before her next tangent could unravel further. "At least not around here." He paused. "I don't want to be  _here_. At all. City Hall was just the best way to prove to my parents I was looking at all the options. They wouldn't believe in me otherwise, or trust me, I guess, to make different choices than theirs." He had prepared himself for a stupid remark in response, or a laugh, or, if fortune was truly looking out for him, an end to the conversation entirely, but instead Mimi frowned, suspicious, and finally turned around to look at him directly, face to face. That unnerved him more than the sudden realization that he'd admitted to her what he hadn't quite admitted to himself. How did she do that to him?

"What?" he asked.

"I might have been too severe in my pronouncements earlier," she began. ("What's that? You were wrong?") "Our parents aren't always great people, but that doesn't mean we should hide parts of ourselves from them, right?"

"I'm not hiding anything."

"You just said you went after this internship so you could avoid being honest with yours."

"Well, we all don't have egg-based attractions to distract our parents from news with."

"News that you want to leave? What child doesn't want to leave?"

"You?"

"Funny."

"Sorry, I'm just not really following what this is all supposed to be." He grinned anyway, "What do you mean?"

"I me _an_ ," said Mimi slowly, stretching this last singular syllable as far as his patience permitted in the moment, "that the real problem here seems to be that you don't know how to stand up for yourself."

Taichi laughed. "All right, we're done, this is going nowhere—,"

"No, come on, listen," and she pressed a hand to his chest, pushing him back. "Your parents are, what, in their sixties?" ("Yes, that makes perfect mathematical sense.") "And you, as the  _blessed heir_ , have built up not only a singularly narrow idea of what they expect you to do with said blessing, but you've also made it out as though doing anything else would break their heart, when, actually,  _you're_  their heart. So the only way to break your parents' heart, Yagami, is to give up on your dreams when they worked so hard for you to have them."

She looked at him, preening at the profundity of her own words, and waited for a response. It was this posture of expectation, really, that wouldn't let him react the way he might have otherwise; something he didn't quite understand or very much like made him want to wipe that knowing smirk off her lips one way or another. So, instead, he peeled her fingers off him, masking the thick lump in his throat with a cough too casual to deceive anyone who really knew him—which would  _not_  be her, he swore then and there. "Well, you're right about one thing: I am pretty blessed."

Her face melted into a petulant scowl. "Jesus—,"

"Okay, okay, sorry, sorry," and he grinned, chuckling at her disgust. "It's hard to turn it off after practice."

Her face grew even longer at that excuse. "Why do you even hang out with those guys anyway?" She shuddered at the perceptively timed roar from upstairs.

"They're my teammates."

Her tsk carried a particularly judgmental tone. "I wouldn't be caught anywhere near people who could risk my reputation," she declared.

His mouth twitched at the arrogance. "Aren't you smart."

She continued, oblivious to the forced tenor to his voice now, "I mean, reputation is really about your friends, isn't it? That's all people who don't know you have to start from, who you spend time with."

He straightened, hands in his pockets. "This your way of telling me I don't deserve my internship again?"

She turned her head to the side, appraising him. Her eyes were lighter under the bathroom lighting, but her gaze still so precise. He shrugged his shoulders in an effort to disguise the oddly escapist instinct to hide from it. "I haven't decided yet," she said, honest, as though genuinely believing he might be anxious to have her opinion. "But Daddy's reputation is my reputation."

"You sure like to fight 'Daddy's' battles for him," he said.

"Don't you call my daddy 'Daddy'—,"

"'Mayor Daddy' better?"

Her lips parted scandalously, and he had to catch himself from impulsively closing the distance to them, when the door opened.

"Mimi, you in here still?"

Taichi glanced behind him to the now opened door, where a bespectacled tall man stood, his dark curls impeccably smoothed into waves. Damn, what he wouldn't give to get his nest of hair to obey gel laws like that.

"Yes, I'm here!" Distracted from her next comeback, Mimi, smiling, threw out her arms for a hug, which Jou obliged out of exasperation, walking her out into the hallway again.

He kept his arm around her waist as they started walking to the basement stairwell. "So is Yamato. He's been calling you."

"My phone's dead again."

"I keep telling you to close your apps," he reminded her.

"But you never know when you might need to use one!"

"Then you just reopen the app."

"See, that's adding an extra step where one needn't be—,"

Taichi spoke up then, ears starting to bleed. "This is riveting, really, but I'm going to need to get by y—,"

Jou glanced back at him, as though only just realizing who he was, and where he had been before. "Why were you in the bathroom with plum guy?"

"He's trying to hide from Catherine."

Jou's face finally opened, "Wait— _that_ plum guy?"

Taichi looked at Mimi, amused, as he followed the pair. "Exactly how many plum guys do you have in your life?"

Halfway up the stairs, her lips slid into a low, arrogant grin as she leaned towards him, bringing Jou's face inadvertently closer to Taichi's ear when he was forced to dip down along with her. "That is a very personal question, Yagami."

And in spite of himself, he laughed, "I can't figure you out, Tachikawa."

"Oh, Yagami, don't you dare start trying now."

He would have responded to that, almost at once, but Mimi wasn't listening anymore, distracted attention caught by the young man waiting at the top of the stairs, his dark blue eyes warming at the sight of her bright face. Taichi looked past her, meeting the man's gaze. His heart was back in his throat, stomach knotted as tight as his fist, without his even thinking to make one.

"Ishida?"

Mimi, still holding onto Jou's hand as she came to a stop on the stairs midway between them, exclaimed in surprise over her manners, "Have I really not introduced you two yet?" Tsking herself, she waved Yamato to come halfway down to meet them, but Taichi interrupted, "We've met."

She looked confused, hesitant in her cheer now, "Oh—how—?"

Their eyes met, over the top of her head, like a whole life had passed by without her. Yamato's face changed, chin lowering, and Taichi's voice found itself, calm but hoarse, all at once. "He dated my sister."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning out to be a very long and complicated story, but still overall quite silly. I appreciate the low expectations.


	4. now

**now**

* * *

The door's stuck, wedged by some small object Mimi can't quite reach around the sliver of a gap to pick aside. So she stands with a huff of annoyance, scanning the interior through the glass once more. Someone had to be here—the door ajar isn't the only such promising clue; a place like this just wouldn't be closed at this prime afternoon sales hour—but not a soul is in sight. All she sees are crafts and buckets and jars wrapped with newspaper, waxed sheets, and thin tissues delicately spun around a veritable rainforest of a floral bounty. Even from behind the thin gap of the door, she can smell its luxury.

And then—a head pops up behind a miniature stand of vivid morning glories, and Mimi shrieks, and the girl screams back.

She presses one hand to her throat to calm the heartbeat that's lodged there and the other to the glass door, tapping her palm furiously to the clear pane. "The door's stuck!" she yells, pointing to the bottom hinges, but the girl only stares back at her, mouth cutting a gaping frown as she recovers her own breath. Mimi gestures at her a few more times, her expression fixed into a warm, neighborly one, doing her best to channel all that her mother had ever taught her about grace under pressure, such as it were.

The child approaches the door, pulling it back.

Mimi speaks first, breathless. "You're Miku!" she exclaims, her voice squeaky and forced with cheer.

The girl's mouth smears into a thin-lipped frown.

"Oh, I'm not a stranger," Mimi adds, reassuring. "I—I actually am a friend of your mother's," she says. "In fact—and you, of course, won't remember this—I was the first person to change your diaper after you were born."

The child's face tightens, pink lips pinched. "What do you want, a thank you?"

" _Miku_!" The girl ducks, disappearing in a frantic escape to the back of the flower ship, nearly plowing her mother off her feet when she appears in the front room. But she's too quick, spritely, leaving Takenouchi Sora stumbling to catch her footing after she throws her arms in the air in exasperation. "Miku, get back here!"

But they both know she's gone, leaving the women to each other.

Mimi puts a hand over her mouth, hiding a grin. "She's…sharp."

"Don't be kind," says Sora, visibly frustrated. "She's been driving me crazy all morning. All  _week_." She directs this last remark to the back of the shop, raising her voice.

"You should bring her to the café," suggests Mimi. "Not for the caffeine," she adds quickly, reassuring, as though she imagined Sora thought otherwise of her sense of responsibility. "Or the sugar…." She trails off, wondering what she  _had_  had in mind from the initial offer.

Sora, meanwhile, is gracious. "I promise we've been meaning to come by. I keep thinking I'd bring us over once the high season settled, but that's the thing about a flower shop—people are always having birthdays, weddings, or making mistakes they need to apologize for," she winks, and regrets it almost immediately. Mimi's wince is too pronounced to mask, and the other woman tries not to make it obvious what she already knows. Instead, she gestures for a hug herself, which Mimi obliges, relieved for even some semblance of normalcy, until Sora speaks again, getting straight at it. "Now, what's he done that I can help you with?"

Mimi balks, "Can't a person just come by to say hello?"

"A person can, yes, but you can't," says Sora with a laugh.

She grumbles in response, albeit good-naturedly, her friend's smile so contagious in its affection. Even so, distraction is her best bet. "Shouldn't she be in school?"

It's a good tactic, in the sense that now Sora's face has immediately transformed, but a sore move nonetheless, given the subject. She digs her fingers into the tufts of unruly thin wisps at her temples, shaking her head as she rubs her face hard. "She  _is_ , but then she got suspended. Did you know they even suspend first graders?" And with a sigh, Sora glances at the other woman, lowering her arms in a drooping surrender. "Don't have children, Mimi."

She blinks quickly, hearing how light and false her laugh sounds to her, even if Sora can't. "I'll remember that."

Sora shrugs, gesturing for Mimi to follow her to the window displays where they can continue their chat as she continues her work. She picks up a long-throated water can to reach the deeper vases. "Between you and me," she begins, as easily as though they've always talked like this to each other, an implicit posture that Mimi's chest swell with affection and guilt, "I'm thinking of having her homeschooled."

This is somewhat surprising, even to her, though Mimi thinks that if anyone could juggle so much all alone, it'd be Sora. "Really?"

"I mean, I was for a little while," the redhead admits. "I didn't take to it all that well, and then my parents—well, you know," and Mimi forces another sympathetic grimace. "But Miku's always been a bit different." She brings the watering can closer to her chest, hugging it tightly, the knuckles of her hands pinched white. "She's not very good at making friends."

Mimi glances into the back of the shop, its hinged, hanging stockroom door leaving glimpses into the dimly lit interior to the house-turned-business, where a radio has been turned on, an attempt to defer accusations of eavesdropping. She can recognize the gesture, as it's all too personal. So she clears her throat, speaking just a twitch too loudly, but not at a level to make Sora suspicious, either. "They just can't see how special she is. Not yet, at least."

Sora presses her lips together, biting a smile back. "Anyway, I'm thinking about it," she continues. "Hikari works for one, so we're meant to talk it over next month, at Takeru and Daisuke's." She glances at her, eyes sly. "You're going?"

"Have I got a choice?"

"Do the Motomiyas allow choices?"

She hides her giggle better than Sora, whose laugh is shameless. She returns the watering can to its stand and sorts out a pair of weeding scissors from a messy supplies drawer. "You know, I still remember that homecoming dance, in college—I think it was your last year, right?"

"Oh, God— _the dance_ —,"

"And then Daisuke crashed the stage—,"

She's groaning, still struck by the secondhand embarrassment, nearly ten years on. "How many times did he demand a recount to that class election?"

"I just want to know why he insisted on making it a college-wide affair!" Mimi protests.

"Well, it worked," admits Sora. "I know more about their class than I do my own. Not that I had much of a choice, really, with you and Taichi being at each other's throats over your dad's campaign. A girl needed to make other friends to stay out of the line of fire."

She's dismissive, her penchant for nostalgic amusement always stopping just short of those last weeks. "Friendly competition is a good thing. He had no right to complain to you about what trying to one-up me got him."

"Actually," answers Sora, lifting the pair of scissors towards a particularly weedy orchid, "Taichi didn't really talk about you to me all that much back then."

She watches Sora shire off a rotten branch. "Ah. So, he draws the line at insider trading, I gu—,"

"No." Her interruption is as firm as it is gentle in its politeness. "He didn't talk about you the way you don't talk about a secret. Not a secret you hide," she adds, answering Mimi's next response before she can even think to make it. "One you want to keep, as long as you can."

When she does find her voice, it sounds tight, even to her. "Well. You and I remember that summer really differently."

Sora's discretion is unmatched. "Probably. Still, he's why you're here, right?"

She doesn't hesitate. "He told you?"

It's a useless question, a tactic to stall, and they both know it. "Some of it," Sora says, to be kind, or subtle, or just withhold, because hers wasn't the trust she was used to holding. "To be fair, it surprised me, too. I don't think I've seen Susumu since Miku was a toddler."

"Why?"

She smiles again, like she doesn't know what else to do with her face. Shrugging, she moves down the line of arrangements, readjusting heights and lengths of stems. "The problem with living in a smallish town when your mom's the mayor, is that nothing belongs to just you anymore. Everything about you belongs to everyone else. Some people are okay with that. They know how to handle it. You always did," she glances at Mimi, chewing on her lip. "But we didn't."

And that's when it all rises up again, this wall he'd always kept between them, the one with bright red hair and searing brown eyes. "I didn't always, either," says Mimi. "Why else do you think I left?"

Sora lowers the scissors before she can make another perfecting cut to a small lily plant. "I really would rather us argue about other things."

So she looks away, allowing herself the moment to cool the warm tinge to her skin. She observes the potted plants and freezers full of freshly delivered stems, the bouquets in different stages of organization and the selection of ceramic and glass vases that occupy the center table. Mimi purses her mouth, eyes narrowing. "You need more pinks."

Sora smiles, whether she wants to or not. "Miku said the exact same thing to me yesterday."

She can recognize the tone that settles around the shop then, and leaves it where it lands. Shouldering her purse a bit closer to her waist, she says, "Bring her to the café if you run out of things for her to do here, or if you just need a break. Kids like cooking."

Sora passes her a wordless glance of appreciation, only nodding in acknowledgement. Before Mimi can get all the way to the door, she calls after her, "He'd tell you everything, if you just asked him. You know that, right?"

Mimi holds the door open as she looks back at her. "You and I remember that summer really differently."

Her mouth parts as though she were ready to say it this time, but still something stops her. Her lips close tightly, just as Mimi waves her fingers, small, and steps down to the pavement, crossing the small parking lot to where she had left her car. It's only inside, the doors locked and the keys in the ignition, the engine humming low, that she looks back through her phone messages, debating to herself. In the end, she chooses to leave it alone, at least until she's back on her own block, seeing the light flicker on over the doorway to the basement bar under her front café stairs, and the graphic lines sketched roughly onto the paper that's stuck to the bar entrance.

Swearing, Mimi tears herself from the car and stomps across the street, snatching the flyer from the door once she reaches the bottom of the stairs. "Hey, asshole!" The pounding knock startles Taichi by its sharpness, less the insult that accompanies it. A glance disappears both reactions immediately, his lip curling in an annoyed grimace. She presses the back of a handwritten flyer to the window, the paper turned so he can see its depiction of a stick figure drawing with frizzy straw hair, a pink triangle dress, and snarling vampire teeth under the words,  _Do Not Admit_. "Is this supposed to be me?"

He lifts his arms in an exaggerated shrug, the dishrag in one hand carefully twisted around just enough fingers to make his middle one all the more prominent. The flyer crumples in her fist, and she yanks on the handle, stomping into the barroom. "How many of these have you made?"

"They come in signed editions of ten," he says.

"Attempts to get my fangs right?"

He coughs to keep the smirk from his mouth. "What do you want?"

Mimi forces bitterly, "To eat a bit of humble pie, only to be attacked fresh again."

"I'm pretty sure this isn't the worst way I've drawn you."

She ignores this, or any hint of its meaning. "You've been avoiding me all week."

"Count your blessings—,"

"Will you just let me say sorry?"

"If this is an apology," and he waves his hand in a circle around her face, gesturing to her sour demeanor and begrudging posture, "try it on someone else."

"I'm saying  _sorry_. I'm not  _apologizing_ ," says Mimi.

His sigh is strained, exhausted. "Do you share the same plane of existence with anyone on this earth?"

"I saw Sora."

She's looking straight at him, unblinking, and he doesn't break. "Okay," he says, voice cool.

She turns her head, the strain of not rolling her eyes taking its toll on the wrinkle that presses tightly across her forehead. "There's no need to be cryptic, you know."

"I can't help what I excel at."

" _Ha_." She steps closer. "You're as bad at keeping secrets as I am."

He doesn't move. "False. I know plenty of things you don't know."

She reaches the bar by then, and, to his greater discomfort, takes a seat on a rickety barstool. Its creaking legs twang with disrepair, and he braces himself for a remark about the shabbiness, or the dull shine at the bar railing, or the spots that have stained the counters so darkly nothing could rescue the original color. Except no such comments come, but neither does she let her hands leave her lap. Instead, she says, "I don't believe that's true."

"You're not going to trick me into talking," he warns, while the  _again_  he should have added hangs between them.

Mimi purses her lips. "Talking isn't a trick." She pauses to let her temper even out amidst the back-and-forth, the only sort of verbal trap they ever seemed to set for each other. "And I had to talk to her, because you w—,"

He immediately turns around, moving down to the other end of the bar for an excuse to get away from her, from any of this, and she's bending over the counter, arm stretched out flat on top of it. "I told you to drop this."

"Taichi—,"

"Drop it—,"

" _Tai_."

"This is what you always do, Tachikawa," he says, voice raised sharply over her stubbornness, stopping to speak only after he's reached the other end of the room. "You bulldoze your way—do you hear me?  _Your_  way, because it's only ever allowed to go  _your_  way—through everything and over everyone, all because you think you know better than everyone else what they should be doing, or saying, or just  _being_." He takes a breath, "That's not how normal people interact with each other—,"

"Who cares about normal?" she yells back, arms thrown up in the air in frustration. "You can't be normal and be me!"

"Jesus Christ—,"

She keeps going, animated, because an arrest of any kind has never occurred to her as a sensible course of action. "I shouldn't be faulted for my strengths just because they aren't strengths  _you_  have, or anyone else—,"

He suddenly slumps forward over the end of the bar to better cradle his forehead in his open palms. "It's like talking to a wall," he mutters loudly into his hands.

"A wall that has to do all it can to support all the other rooms in the house," she snaps back.

Taichi turns his neck to stare at her, blank. "Have you ever used a metaphor successfully?"

She feels her face grow hot, and sits back on the stool, stiff and straight-backed. "You know what I mean."

"Tachikawa, I am absolutely terrified of knowing what you mean." He straightens then, but still doesn't come back to her, only shifts his arms up to run both his hands through his hair. "But you do make trying to figure it out interesting."

Her lips curl. "A strength."

Taichi braces himself against the wall, arms folded across his chest. "Why do you always have to have the last word?"

"Because it makes you mad," says Mimi primly. "And you look stupid when you're mad. Your face gets all red, and you get all wrinkly around your mouth—,"

"You forfeited the right to talk about my face a long time ago." She purses her lips, the incredulity plain on her own face, and he lowers his arms. "I don't want to talk about my family with you. And not because it's you," he says quickly when her mouth opens again. She closes it with great regret, and he continues, "I just don't want to bring that stuff here."

Mimi's at a loss, somehow not expecting that—or this—to be a factor at all in this. She stares around the shabby, dim bar. "Wait, you mean, this…shithole?"

He doesn't correct her, merely clarifying, "You used to like this shithole."

"Everyone was stupid in college." She points to the ceiling, "Plus it was the upstairs that was the best part. The basement was always creepy. None of us hung out down here." He allows this comment to hang in the air for dramatic effect, and she's surprisingly slow to catch on. Her huff of displeasure is meant to foreclose any feeling of guilt, he suspects, and she doesn't at all seem to be bothered by the accusatory glance he gives her then, either. "Clearly, nothing about that part's changed," she says in the end.

"Plenty of people come 'round here still," he says with the false confidence of a losing bet.

She taps a finger to the counter, not bothering with looking about the room. "It's three o'clock on a Friday and I'm it."

Taichi mimes an open-faced "So?" with one hand. "Your point?"

She entertains the idea he's being flippant on purpose, but decides, from the hard bend of his jaw, that he really doesn't quite see it. She shakes her head. "Well, at least we can say business school would have been truly wasted on you."

He's smirking. "I did go to business school."

"No, you didn't," she scoffs, rolling her eyes.

"Except I did." He moves down the counter to the sink, and she stares at his attempts to keep busy by wiping the taps down with the rag he'd been using when she'd first walked in. "Night school, but still did it."

"You didn't," she repeats, slower this time. "I know you didn't."

"Sure. Say something three times, and it's bound to undo the fabric of reality and reset the world to your liking, why not?"

Mimi continues to stare at him. "Why do you do that?"

He doesn't raise his face, but his gaze still darts up, cool and dark. "Do what?" he says.

"Talk to me like I'm stupid."

He stops.

"Yes, you do," she answers the  _I do that?_  he can't quite say out aloud. "It's mean."

He pulls his lips over his tongue, pressing his mouth closed. "Yeah," Taichi admits in the end, chin dipped down, "I know it is."

She frowns, fingers lacing loosely together in her lap. Then she straightens, sharp, extra sarcastic in her miming, "If this is an apology—,"

"Okay, will you just—," and he cuts himself off, a soft smile on his lips as he shakes his head. He speaks softly, careful to look at her when she looks at him, this time, "Look, I'm sorry. I have never thought you were stupid."

She's still curt, sore. "I know I'm not. And I don't care if you do," she adds, clarifying the terms. "Just don't think I'm not going to be mean to you, too, when you deserve it."

He's rolling his eyes. "Sounds exhausting."

"It wouldn't be if you weren't being stupid so much."

"Well, we all give things up to get where we are."

"And what did you give up for all this?" Mimi dares, mockingly looking around the dim barroom, lip curling. Her gaze takes its time in its exaggerated sweep to return to him, but it does, and that's how she finds him, looking back at her, his whole face broken open.

"You know," he says.

Her tongue presses to the roof of her mouth, a trick she'd learned to keep it shut, protect herself from her worst habits. He seems to mistake the hardness of her expression for the same awkwardness he feels, too, and moves to retrieve a clean glass from the shelf. "I'm still technically on the clock," she says, observing the frothy ale of the second bar tap drain into the glass with some interest.

He slides the full pint across to her, and then makes one for himself. "Just take it."

She does but doesn't cheers him. Licking the sweet drops from her lip, she holds the glass between her hands on the counter and observes the back bar, its old wall hangings and picture frames, the bits of scrap paper tacked here and there with notes and numbers, the half-empty and full bottles of liquor, the shelves in need of a good dusting. But then, she's not sure she can remember a time it didn't look this way; all she can think of are all the times it had looked so much worse here, this dim dark. It was how he'd always kept the place, despite the number of times they'd tried to get him fix things up, spruce it up a bit, attract more patrons. A ploy, really, if she were honest, to keep the place theirs. To keep the developers out, the new tenants at bay, the change in the town that Mayor Takenouchi's election had promised—threatened—to bring back for just a little longer. But Hiroaki had never been interested in making this space anything but his, and just how he liked it.

She takes a breath, hands closing tight around the beer glass. "Taichi, I want to buy the bar."

He puts own drink down, bracing himself with both hands on the bar railing. "Mi."

She pushes her glass aside to lean closer to him. "You know I'd take care of it. I wouldn't—I won't do anything he wouldn't have liked—,"

"That's not the reason."

"Then why not?" Her impatience makes the syllables stretch, unattractive in their petulant tone. "I'm good at this, Tai. I can—I could really turn this place around. And you wouldn't have to stay," she adds, seizing the next trick up her sleeve when the doubt casts even more darkly across his face. "You could get out, you know, like you always said you would if you didn't have—,"

"I'm here because I choose to be here," he interrupts, quick. "Okay?"

But it isn't, to her. She argues back, "Only because you wouldn't let yourself admit there are other choices—,"

Taichi backs up again, moving down the bar and dragging his drink with him. She turns on the barstool, gripping the railing with one hand. "When are you just going to admit that the only roadblocks you keep seeing here are the ones you put up for yourself?" she demands.

"That's the difference between you and me," he snaps back. "I don't see my family or my friends or my town as a roadblock, because I  _like_  where I'm from—,"

"No, you're just more scared of where you could go." When he doesn't respond, Mimi draws her hands back to her lap, fingertips tapped together to give herself a moment to breathe again. "How do you think she'd feel," she begins, speaking carefully, "if she knew what she kept you from?"

Taichi shakes his head. "Sora never kept me from anything."

"So she knows what you did for her?"

The doubt in her voice, her lack of faith in his honesty then, and the truth of all of it, turns something dark he doesn't think to stop.

"More than Yamato ever did for you," he says, low.

Her face turns white, tongue frozen. He bites his own too late. The stool slides back against the wooden floor, heels landing hard on the ground. She snatches the clutch from the counter, wrenching it open, and it's only after she's wrested a few of the bills that he's found his voice again. "Don't—come on, stop. I don't want your money.  _Stop_ —,"

"I might be mean," she interrupts, voice thin, "but I am not cruel."

He stands straight, palms braced on the ledge of the shelves behind him. "Mimi—,"

"I'm going to take this place," she promises him then. "I'm taking everything."

He's silent, lips still parted, and watches her storm through to the back of the bar, finding the doorway to the basement corridor after the stockroom. The slamming of the door jolts him back, making him suck his breath, furious with himself. He grips the bar counter and hoists himself over the railing, stumbling to catch his footsteps without toppling the barstool she'd shoved back in her exit, and takes the rear staircase two at a time to get to the bakery's kitchen. "Mi, wait, please—,"

"That's a new one."

 _Damn_.

He immediately redirects, attempting a distractedly casual posture. "Ah, yeah, h—hey, Miyako. How've you been?"

"Good," the young woman answers, bright. "I'm really good." She repeats, blushing. "Um," and, dusting her floured hands off on her apron, she gestures to the cannisters along the table next to her. "Do you want some tea? Or coffee? I can make you a—,"

"Uh, okay—wait, no, sorry, I mean, I'm okay for now, thanks," he interrupts himself, and she lowers her hands, visibly confused by his awkwardness in the strange moment. He steels himself, trying to keep his head from ringing. He stops, restarts, and hates how he sounds throughout all this, "Listen, did Mi come up this way?" Miyako just stares back, her expression utterly blank. Taichi retracts again, bracing his tongue between his teeth, and then forces out, "Is Mimi here?"

"Oh!" and she points to the café interior. He offers a brief twitchy smile of thanks and strides awkwardly forward. "But, actually, now's not—," and a loud squeal interrupts both of them, sounding from the café interior over Ken's low voice echoing Mimi's chatter.

"It's okay," Taichi doesn't give any of it attention, determined. "I just need a second with her abou—,"

He stops himself, standing at the kitchen entrance with the door only just ajar. Miyako quickly comes up next to him, peering out at the scene. "Isn't it crazy, a real life celebrity in our store?" she whispers, jittery.

Taichi stares at them, at Mimi's bright laughing face pressed into Catherine's long, thin neck, her arms tightly swung around the dancer's frame. They're swaying a slow circle with their excited embrace of each other; on one turn, Mimi sees him through the doorway, her hazel eyes slick with tears. She blinks them back, and he ducks before Catherine can see him. "Yeah," he says, breath quickening. "Crazy."


	5. then

 

* * *

**then**

* * *

She felt like silk under his hands. It was a stupid description, something only an amateur would have come up with, but that was exactly what she'd turned him into, a hapless, hopeless, reckless newcomer to the only way he could ever see the world now, after her. He wanted to tell her as much, he'd always wanted to, but every attempt before and since had ended up exactly as it did that morning, when he'd opened his bleary, bloodshot eyes to find her own looking back at him, and  _I think I love you_  came out as, "I think I left Sora at the bar."

Yawning, Catherine snuggled herself closer. "She's fine. Kou's got her."

At her reassurance, Taichi felt the hum of his hangover dim a little, or maybe she was the tonic. "What would we do without Koushiro?"

"We should marry him."

"Me first," he said, and kissed her, pulling himself up and over her as she sank into the one good pillow, tussled hair caught between his fingers and his face tucked into the curve of her neck. "I think I dreamt about you."

She laughed at the whimper he made when she moved her hips beneath him. "A good one?"

He would have answered, should have, but then his head was too full of too much: of Koushiro talking too long and Sora laughing too hard, of Catherine leaning too close and Takeru sharing too much, of Yamato walking too far and Mimi—

He blanked, emptied.

"Don't—!" shrieked Catherine, ducking out of the way just in time for Taichi to launch himself over the side of the bed and dump his face over the bin, retching. The night of bad choices had caught up with him, accelerating with every burst of pain across his dark brown eyes, each one drawing more bile up his burning throat. Catherine suppressed a queasy shudder at the sight and took charge, looking for something to put on. "I'm going to get you some water."

"Aspirin," he gasped, "please—,"

She was dressed and gone just as he heaved again, sides convulsing, his eyes shut tight. He pressed his sweaty forehead into the bend of his arm as it hung around the rim of the rubbish bin, fingers curled into a steadying fist, trying to keep the world from spinning out.

What the hell had he drunk last night? All he remembered were grimy walls, worn advertisements, a dark stairwell, and something… _something_  breaking open.

Her hand was on his bare shoulder and he jumped, then groaned at the triggered churning of his stomach, and she instantly slunk back, wary. "This is not a reaction to you," he reassured, spitting.

Catherine tutted. She held a glass of water and an open bottle of aspirin at arm's length towards him. "Of course, it isn't. Have you seen me?"

Taichi laughed, making a weak effort at rubbing his face. Struggling to sit back, he accepted both offerings from her, suppressing the instinct to hurl again when the water touched his lips. He swallowed one tablet with some difficulty. "How are you not sick?"

"It's called moderation."

But he was shaking his head, forcing himself to remember more. "I didn't have all that much. I think."

"You weren't  _planning_  to," said Catherine. She scooted back to the edge of the bed, far enough to avoid the splash zone but close enough to grab his head out of the bin if it got stuck the next round. "But then Mimi dared you to do some shots with her—,"

He felt his stomach lift, and his cheeks swelled. A false alarm. He breathed through an open mouth, breathing hard, and waved her concern off, rubbing his eyes. "You let me do shots?"

"You are your own person, Taichi."

" _Sora_  let me do shots?"

Catherine's lip curled into the deepest smirk, her chin tilted to the side. The look she gave him slipped by entirely, unmoored except to her own hesitations. "Well, like I said. Koushiro's got her now."

He snorted, still rubbing his face. "They're just friends."

"Mm."

This time, he heard it. Glancing up after forcing another gulp of precious water, he let his brow wrinkle, toeing a line with more confidence than someone in his position really should pretend to have, next to someone like her. "I think I like you jealous."

Her tongue slipped out between her teeth, nose wrinkled. "You can be friends with whoever you like, and so can I."

"Is that what we are?"

She shrugged, her thin shoulders pinching together. "Don't you want to be friends?"

He would have answered, should have. He should have shown her what he thought about such a ridiculous question, joining her on the bed to make sure she could never think otherwise about what he wanted. Instead, he asked, "When do you leave?"

Catherine shrugged again. "He said he was coming to pick me up at my apartment before lunch."

He nodded. "Well, we better get you back to your apartment then."

"We?" she repeated, blonde eyebrow arching.

He raised his arms, open palmed. "Guess not."

"No, probably not."

"Cat."

She looked at him and shook her head. "I'm not asking you again."

"I'm not asking you to," Taichi protested. He pulled himself closer to the foot of the bed where she was sitting now, cross-legged above him. "I just—," and he paused, holding his breath, seeing it all clearly through the dull haze of his hangover.

She bent so her lips touched his forehead. "Let's leave it."

"I don't want to."

"Me neither." After a few minutes, Taichi stood, gangly and unstable, taking his time gathering himself up. She helped by finding him fresher clothes to wear. "Should I drop you off at work on the way?"

"You'd be going too far out of yours," he pointed out, accepting her selection and bundling all the clothes into a loose ball in his arms. "It's all right, Catherine."

She took far too long to nod but managed it, in the end. She moved to embrace him, then grimaced at the idea. "Wash up, or I'll leave before I let you kiss me," she warned.

"Five minutes," he promised, only to fumble out the room and nearly collide right into a short blond man with a splotchy face and a bright sunburnt nose. Taichi leapt back. "Willis! Practice a heavier gait, will you?"

Unbothered by the fright he'd caused, his flatmate continued down the hallway towards their shared kitchen. "You know you're late for your internship, right?" he asked without another glance when he passed him.

"You could have woken me," he called in frustration.

"Your problems are your own, Taichi."

Tossing the clean clothes onto the bathroom floor, he leaned against the doorway, peering out at him. "Would it kill you to show me a little kindness?"

"I'd rather not test the theory." But Willis still paused, smirking. His pale blue eyes darted to Taichi's bedroom across the corridor and then back to his disheveled appearance. "I'm glad this City Hall gig isn't taking all the wildness out of you."

He wasn't ready to concede. "You look like you caught a fair share yourself," he said, and left one hand gripping the doorframe to bend over the sink, splashing his face after the tap had run cold enough.

Willis made a great show of collapsing back onto the wall, arms spread in a dramatic surrender to the perfect twist of fate that was his vacation. "A week in the most beautiful part of the most beautiful country with the most beautiful views and the most beautiful people you could ever imagine," he groaned. "And all I've got to show for it is this sunburn."

"Doesn't really sound like that's 'all' you got," he said. He dipped back up and halfway out the doorway again, mouthwash sloshing between his full cheeks, and winked knowingly, a gesture Willis returned with far too much slickness.

His hand darting up to the dark red mark on the side of his throat, he shared, "You should have seen their necks." Taichi would have spat the mouthwash onto the corridor wall if he hadn't managed to dive for the bathroom sink just in time, while Willis laughed behind him. "Hey, don't judge me for my kinks after you and Sora were at it all ni—,"

"Sorry, Will," interjected Catherine. She was freshly dressed again, her hair whipped into a tight bun. "That was me."

Willis stood up straight, mouth suck frozen open, and before he could breathe a word Taichi had latched Catherine by the wrist and pulled her into the bathroom with him, shutting the door. "That," he warned, "is the biggest mouth on campus, you know that?"

"Tough luck, Yagami," she teased. "It's a campus I get to leave."

"Without me."

She stepped up to him, "Last chance."

He understood what she meant, and what she didn't.

And, unable to answer, he kissed her. His forehead pressed to hers, he whispered, "I can't wait for your boyfriend's luck to run out one day."

And, unable to answer, she kissed him back.

Moments after she'd gone, Taichi reemerged and returned to his bedroom, searching for the side sling workbag Hikari had given him for his internship—a job, he realized with a wincing cringe, he was in danger of losing if he didn't move faster. Fuck, last night had really gotten out of hand….

Grumbling, his stomach settled uneasily as he found his phone under the bed and the last unstained necktie in his closet. The mobile was dead, chipped across the protective glass . Sighing, he slipped the phone into his back pocket and yanked the unused portable phone charger from the wall, stuffing it into the workbag's outer pocket. Then he turned to the mirror and found his flatmate standing in the doorway, ominously silent.

Yelling, Taichi dropped the tie on the floor, arms raised in defense. His heart thundered. "Can you please put on some weight, or wear a bell, or  _something_ —,"

Willis pointed to the rubbish bin. "Is that your puke, or your mistress's?"

Taichi let out a slow breath, lowering his arms. "Really would suggest a trial run on that kindness theory someday."

He snorted, crossing the room to pluck the tie from the floor. He pulled it around Taichi's neck, twisting the knot carefully. "I'm not pretending I'm a saint either—," (Taichi started to laugh, then gasped when Willis yanked the knot tight to his throat) "—but even I would be halfway there by now."

He slid a hand down the front of the neat fabric, fingering the knot looser. "It's not the right time," he muttered, and Willis just stood staring back at him with a blank expression. "What?"

"When  _is_  the right time?"

Taichi stopped, breathing light. He shut his eyes, "I—I'm—,"

Willis interrupted, "Because, like, it's nearly eleven, and if you aren't going to get fired for stretching the generosity of a slow Friday to  _this_  start time, then it's definitely going to be f— _ow_!"

He cursed, "Then get out of the way—!" and tripped around him, limbs entangled, and flung himself out the door.

"The  _bin_ , Taichi! You can't leave that shit here!"

But he was gone, taking the stairs to the ground floor two at a time and unlocking his bicycle from the rack lining the side entrance. He shouldered his workbag, took a deep breath, and swung a leg over the seat—then immediately got off, bending over at the waist with a groan after riding a wobbly few yards. "Nope," he said to himself, stomach freshly churning, "nope, we're walking this."

And because he kept his gaze on the sidewalk as he rolled the bike along with him, hoping the staring would ground his disoriented sensibility, teeth grinding in concentration, he didn't see the pick-up truck that moved itself into the far lane just to follow along. It paused when he did at the crosswalk, and the driver rolled the window down by hand. "How the hell are you still alive?"

Taichi stopped, squinting. "Takaishi?"

Takeru leaned out of the side of the truck, his hand braced against the door panel, and laughed. "I really thought she killed you on that last tequila bomb."

He heaved, raising a silencing finger. "Don't—please—do not speak about alcohol to me now, or ever again."

Takeru grinned, nodding his head to the side. "Put your bike in the back. I'll give you a lift."

"You don't know where I'm going."

"Taichi," and he rolled his eyes, "you spent last night threatening everyone who came into the bar that you were going to put Mr. Tachikawa in the prime minister's office. We know where you work."

Something flashed across his mind then: spitfire honey brown eyes and a thin arm slung around his shoulders for support when she leapt into his arms, repeating his insistent declarations to a cheering bar. He blinked quickly, and it was gone, though his neck felt heavier now. "Threatening, huh?"

"Just don't inflict him on the country, and we'll call this favor even."

"Don't think I like the way you're talking about my boss."

"Am I saying anything we both don't already know?" And he laughed, good-natured and easy, "Besides, it's for his own good. I've been over to their home for family dinners, and he's far too codependent to survive in the real world. They would eat him alive out there."

Taichi couldn't dispute this, but nor could he stand any conversation about food. Making a face to steel himself against another nausea wave, he assured Takeru the paleness of his cheeks wasn't due to the wholesome anecdote and wheeled the cycle around to the back of the car. He lifted the bicycle into the truck bed, clumsy and heavy-handed, then struggled into the passenger seat. Every move he made sent a ripple of discomfort through his dulled body, head pounding from the exertion and dehydration.

Takeru noticed. He started the truck back up and drove as slowly as he could to avoid any bumps in the roads. "You're a brave one showing up to work looking like that, for sure."

"I was hoping the tie would help distract from the rest," he muttered. "Honestly, I really don't remember too much of last night."

"Probably for the best," admitted Takeru.

"Saying it like that isn't comforting me."

"Who said anything about comforting you?"

With another chuckle, Taichi ducked his head under a wide palm, pinching his nose to keep the discomfort at bay. "Let's just ride in silence."

"See, you say things like that and leave me wondering why you and Yamato don't get along better."

"Because neither of us will humor you?"

"Fuck you, I'm hilarious."

They came to a stop at a red light, and Takeru let Taichi's laugh fade into a comfortable quiet. Being at ease with each other had never been an issue, even if they hadn't exactly ever been close to begin with, despite Takeru and Hikari having shared the same homeroom for most of high school. And even if Takeru had noticed him, Taichi hadn't paid much reciprocal consideration, far too fixated on where his older brother's evolving attentions lay whenever the rides Takeru had been getting from Yamato coincided with the same times that Taichi dropped Hikari off or picked her up. But even in these briefest of moments, which hadn't always made much of an impression on Taichi's own memory, Takeru himself remembered getting along with Taichi, who seemed to get along with everyone anyway; it was likely the one reason why his mother had relented to admitting her youngest son to a college away from their hometown, despite the moderate distance it actually was. Anyone related to Hikari had to be stable and dependable and safe, his mother believed, and it was enough to let her think what she needed to think if it meant he'd finally get to be on his own, away from his worrying mother and puttering e father and overbearing brother, and sharing the same campus with someone he got along with easily, and was hoping to get along with better.

Well, that had been the plan at any rate, until yesterday.

Truth be told, before yesterday, and despite sharing the same school for a year now, Takeru hadn't seen Taichi more than a few times. It wasn't unexpected: there was little overlap between their social circles on a campus as big as theirs, and sharing coursework was obviously not possible. Plus, he'd been busy himself. First year adjustments required reorientation not only to this new place but also this new lifestyle. Now, Takeru knew how to take care of himself. He could be self-sufficient, if a little more socially needy than other peers, and never had much issue setting goals and seeing them through while still cheerfully open to whatever else life brought along to him. So first year life, including joining the basketball team—recruited, really; the scholarship certainly helped—and writing for one of the campus's papers and exploring electives and going to parties had been fun, and then came talk about getting involved in class administration. All of it meant that he'd somehow managed, rather quickly, really, to move on from who he was before he'd stepped onto campus and became someone who was finally coming into their own self.

And then Yamato had started coming to visit.

His brother went to another university, one far exceeding Takeru's own academic ability, a fact that Yamato never made obvious or even relevant. He hadn't expected to follow him there, nor did he want to even if he could. He was grateful that Yamato seemed to understand this, though that didn't stop him from staying in frequent touch. It was funny, really, that Takeru had come to loathe written communications despite loving writing as much as he did, but the nearly daily messages or emails or texts had only gotten worse since he finally started college. One attempt to put a pin in the state of perpetual anxiety that his entire existence seemed to invoke in every member of his immediate family was getting Yamato to visit him whenever his studying permitted it. And then, on the very first visit, Yamato had met Mimi, and Takeru's luck finally turned around.

At least, until yesterday, when it would spin all the way around, and back again.

He glanced a second time at Taichi before the light changed, counting the haggard breath the latter took, clearly still suffering from the long night. He ought to have been considerate about that, but he was too curious. "So…you left Sora at the bar."

Taichi immediately opened his eyes. "You've talked to her?"

"You haven't?"

"I  _can't_. My phone's dead." He quickened with realization, "Let me borrow yours."

"How? I don't have her number."

"What is with the youth these days not knowing any phone numbers on their own?"

"I'm three years younger than you."

Taichi still plucked Takeru's mobile from the cup holder. "Did you see when she left last night?"

"No, sorry. I was with Yamato most of the night." Taichi only grunted in response, focused on the screen, and Takeru shook his head again, deducing which reference the other's temper fixated on for now. "You have more in common than you think."

"You watch that mouth," Taichi warned.

"They're better as friends," continued Takeru, "which is what they are, Tai. Just friends."

He grunted again. "He should have figured out that's all they are before any of that shit happened the way it did."

Takeru remained optimistic. "Maybe. Still, live and le—,"

"No," and Taichi, having finished sending his text message to Sora, shoved the phone back into the cup holder with enough clatter to silence Takeru's sarcastic retort.

He recovered quickly. "So, what? We're all just supposed to get everything right the first time 'round?"

Taichi made a sarcastic gesture. "What's wrong with trusting your gut?"

Takeru could think of several things wrong with such impulsiveness. Focused on the road ahead, his gaze firmly averted, he continued, "Well, here's hoping that your gut keeps itself together long enough to get through the afternoon."

"Keisuke's not in today," he explained. He finished his text message and put the phone back in the cup holder. "Otherwise I would have definitely not gone that hard." He muttered to himself, darkly, "Shots…seriously, Yagami?"

Takeru was amused by the self-admonition. "You're both to blame for that, and you both alone."

His hand found its way back to his neck, rubbing lightly. "Is she as much of a nutcase with your brother as she is with everyone else?"

"Aw, you've already got nicknames for each other."

"Ha ha ha," mocked Taichi. He paused, "What nickname?"

"We're here," announced Takeru with expert timing. He stopped the vehicle outside the side staff entrance to City Hall, and Taichi dragged himself out of the truck. He left the workbag on the front seat and removed his bicycle from the back bed, wheeling it slowly back around to the rack near the sidewalk and laboriously locking it up. Takeru handed him his bag through the open window and nodded at his phone. "You want me to call when Sora answers?"

"Thanks, Takaishi," said Taichi, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "Keisuke should know where I am."

He hesitated, breath drawing tight in his nervousness. "Or, I mean, maybe it'd just be easier if I had your num—,"

But Taichi had suddenly gone rigid, straight-backed, as though the turmoil of his pounding heading and pinching stomach weren't doing havoc to his ability to maintain a sober equilibrium. His dark brown eyes narrowed, and his voice transformed to an octave Takeru had never heard from a non-demonic force before. "Is that Tachikawa's car?"

Takeru turned his neck to follow his cold gaze, spying the polished white sedan with the gold trim parked at an innocent diagonal across two parallel spots in the City Hall employee lot. "That is definitely her parking job," he joked, amused, and looked back to see Taichi had already flung himself at the staff entrance, scrambling with his plastic security badge and hurling himself into the building without another word.

Ahead of him, Taichi could hear her running up through the hallway to the elevator, and he swung his workbag up under his arm so it held snug against his upper back, and, braced with a miraculous burst of focused adrenaline, raced to the staircase, stumbling down them two at a time. He shoved the stairwell door open with a shoulder just as the elevator door squeaked open, and they stood at opposite ends of the hallway, staring.

Her face paled, though he thought it was already rather pasty, even despite the light layer of foundation and a modest amount of mascara outlining puffy, red eyes. Her hair was still damp from her morning routine, the wet waves curled up into a small bun. She wore a blazer whose buttons had been misaligned in her haste to arrive, and her linen cotton skirt had more than one wrinkle to it. It was the closest to a mess he'd ever seen her, and it dawned on him, then, that she was up to something, and it all depended on who got to Keisuke's office first.

 _Well, well_.

"No!" Mimi screamed when he streaked forward, diving towards the office door. She ran after him, holding the top of a paper lunch bag tightly in one fist, "You can't win after I planned this so perfectly!"

He wasn't listening at first, heaving against the closed door just inches before her trembling palm slapped at the handle over his own. They held onto the doorknob together, fingers stubbornly entwined. Then he caught her slip. "What plan?"

"Let go—,"

" _You_  let go—,"

"Let go your face—,"

"What does that even mean?"

"This is ridiculous," she hissed, her fingernails pinching into the skin of his palm. "Let's  _both_  let go."

"You first."

"No,  _you_  first—,"

"Count of three?"

"Fine, but  _I'm_  counting—,"

"What's wrong with the way I count?"

"One—,"

"—twothree—ah ha!" he crooned, and she shrieked again, flinging her hand back from his forceful clutch. He pushed the door open, and took the opportunity of his back to hers to gasp deeply, trying to keep his head from spinning as the adrenaline boost plummeted to despairing levels once more. Wincing, he strode forward into the small office, slinging the workbag down into the chair opposite Keisuke's desk, which was still empty of its owner.

"Can't you win anything without cheating?" she complained.

"You tell me," he said, cocky, leaning against the desk with his arms folded. "Were the tequila bombs part of this plan of yours?"

She suppressed a hiccup, lips curling in internal anguish, her hangover striking across her vision sharply. Swallowing hard, she said, refusing to play into a trick confession, "It's not my fault you don't check your phone messages. Daddy left you one this morning telling you he'd decided to come in. When you hadn't answered, I realized—,"

"—that you could try to sabotage me out of this job?" and Taichi shook his head. "What happened with last night's lecture about parents and honesty and sticking up for what you want?"

She pressed her lips together tight, refusing to answer, and watched him struggle to find a free outlet for his phone, frustrating himself with a particularly odd little knot in the cord. Glowering at his clumsy thick fingered effort, she set the lunch bag on the second chair in the corner and took the phone cord from him, untangling the wire. "Tell me something else then. How is it," she began, "that you can be so different with different people?"

He barked a laugh, regretting it when his insides twisted at the snap reflex. He turned away and opened his workbag to begin removing his notebook and phone charger, "Says you."

"I'm the same with everyone," she insisted, returning the evened cord to him. "You, on the other hand," she continued, ignoring his mutterings, "had on one face around Catherine, and another if Koushiro was talking to you, and then a completely different one with Sora—who, by the way, you left at the bar."

He grumbled darkly, but more to himself than to her this time. "Yeah, I know. I can't get a hold of her."

"Serves you right," Mimi said, nose in the air as she picked up her father's takeout lunch, collapsed regally into the chair, and crossed her legs, bag on her lap. He finished plugging in his phone, making sure the little battery icon was glowing before he left it alone, and turned around again just in time to catch the quivering of her lip and the tense wrinkles pinching at the corner of her eyes. He knew that look.

"You're just as hungover as I am, aren't you?"

Her face colored, embarrassed, and then grew paler again. She gulped, giving herself a moment to steel her weak nerves, and said flatly, "I still beat you here."

"You know," he pointed out, "if you wanted to work for your dad, you probably could have just asked him, instead of wasting all your energy trying to one-up me all the time to him."

She watched him unlock a filing cabinet and remove the departmental loaner laptop. Afterwards, she'd blame the lack of precision her dehydrated migraine had induced in her for admitting the truth to him. "I did." When he stopped, staring at her blankly, she forced herself to look away, chin still raised. "He didn't agree."

He saw her shoulders slump just slightly, her limbs still tense, and returned the honesty. "Well. Parents are human, or so I've been told." He was utterly casual, but when she glanced at him again, he winked.

Mimi smiled, however reluctant. "Since you're so keen on my advice, want to hear another one?"

"Nope."

"You should take the day off and go talk to Sora."

He laughed, "Just when I think we're finally connecting, it's back to your insidious plots to get me out of the way."

"I mean it," she protested. "She was really upset when she found out you'd left." Then she made a face, unusually self-reflective, "Actually she was mad before then, I think, because I made you take so many shots…." She let out a low breath, shuddering at the taste of those horrid alcoholic decisions.

He paused then to rub his face slowly. "I'm going to take care of it. Later, I will. I'm just…I'm still trying to sort out what all the hell happened last night."

She snorted, leaning back in the chair. "Fill in the blanks for me, too, when you have it. All I remember are pieces of some dumb dares and Koushiro falling asleep in the booth and Catherine spilling her drink on your shirt." When he didn't answer, fixated on the laptop while seated at the desk, she uncrossed her legs and leaned over in her chair in his direction. Her eyebrows wiggled. "Speaking of."

"I'm not talking about that with you."

"So you don't like her?"

"You are participating in this conversation by yourself."

"Taichi." She rolled her eyes. "Everyone saw you leave together. Just give it up."

He slumped over, face in his hands. "It was so stupid. I was stupid. Catherine's just—she's just always in my head. I thought seeing her off last night would be the mature thing, pretend I was fine with everything, and then it all sort of got out of hand and one thing led to another and now," he held his breath, shaking his head again harder. "I didn't want it to end like that."

In a shocking outburst, she flung her arms up over her head with all the exuberance of a sober person in complete control of their motor skills. "Then go!" she cried. "Go after her! Make a grand gesture!"

"That's moronic," he said.

"It's  _romantic_."

"That's what I said."

"Stop making jokes," but she lowered her voice all the same. "Do you love her?"

He laughed, softly, and pulled the back of his hand over his eyes. "Yeah."

"Then this is how you show her."

"I don't think it is. I think those dumb public gestures are self-centered."

Mimi twisted her face into an exaggerated pout. "How are you so boring and wrong at the same time? The grand romantic gesture is a classic."

"Nope. That stuff should be just for the people involved in it. No one else has to know."

She made her sigh as long as possible. "Well, you and I have very different ideas about expressing love for someone." After a pause, and to his utter dismay, she continued, "Look, my parents basically invented the grand romantic gesture, right? Everything's a performance with them, but it's not for anyone else  _but_  them. I mean, okay, so a lot of them are in public…like the time Mama ran through traffic to beat his taxi home after a long trip, or the time he used throwing the first pitch at the city baseball tournament to give her an anniversary ring." She giggled, "Except he missed her and knocked the umpire clean out for like five minutes—,"

He seized the opportunity to redirect, embarrassed at listening to this side of his boss's private life, "But that's what I mean. Yeah, that day was nice for them, maybe, but the umpire suffering a head injury? Other people get caught up in these things, and it's not always fair how. Why would you make your emotional life someone else's problem?"

Mimi hissed, "He was  _fine_ ," exasperated, muttering, "So boring and so wrong…. What I mean is that the grand gesture's not about other people, even when it is. It's like…," she stopped to think hard, face scrunched small and cute, and he bent over the keyboard to stop from grinning at it. Not noticing his effort, she only brightened, straightened, and said, "It's like this: I look at Yamato and I just want to—want everyone to know about him. Not me or us— _him_. I want to tell everybody about him, because then they'd know what I know, right? Then they'd see why everything's different now." She smiled again, shrugging. "I just can't believe there are people in the world who don't know he's here living in it, too."

Taichi shook his head, having turned back halfway through her wonderings to watch her talk about him. "I'll be honest," he admitted. "It's really weird hearing you talk about my sister's first boyfriend like he's some nice guy or whatever."

"He  _is_  nice—,"

"Okay, okay, spare me the recruitment playbook. I don't want to join your creepy fan club."

"That just makes me want to meet your sister."

"Fat chance," he said, grinning. "I'm never letting you anywhere near her."

She waved him off. "I'll just catch her at the next club meeting. And anyway," she went on, ignoring the finger he gave her over the computer screen, "all I'm saying is that if you think your world can't be the same without Catherine, you do something about it. Forget everybody else. Who cares about anybody else? That's all this comes down to, how she makes you feel. Which is what, Taichi?"

He kept his hand over his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. "Like the whole world came into focus."

Mimi watched him, hushed into a strange quiet. She spoke softly this time, taking a moment to gather her voice again, "Then that's what you do. Go bring the world into focus."

He scooted further in his chair, resuming his working posture at the desk. "I don't think that's what Sora'd tell me to do."

"Well, Yagami, I'm not—," and then she stopped, gasping, holding her stomach.

His own dropped. "No—don't—if I see you, then I'll start, and I alrea—oh, come on!" he cried, for Mimi had already grabbed the paper bag, pulled it open, and spat a mouthful of vomit into her father's lunch.

The smells mixed horrifically, and Taichi gagged, staggering to his feet, as she bent over in her chair with the lunch bag between her knees, groaning. He scrambled for something of his own, finding the potted plant at the base of Keisuke's desk just as Keisuke himself walked back into the office. Taichi immediately stood to attention, so quick that he dragged the pot up with him, gripping the leafy plant against a stomach swelling past the point of no return. He tried anyway, immeasurably sweaty. "Good af—( _ugh_ )—ternoon, sir," he managed through a mouth that felt full of wet marbles.

Keisuke stayed frozen in the doorway, bewildered.

By this time Mimi had pulled herself upright in her chair, gripping the top of the lunch bag and twisting it closed, as though that could do anything about the horrendous stench or the damning evidence. She stood, approached the desk, and placed the bag gently on one of the free corners. Her other hand reached up and around to the back of Taichi's neck, gripping him by the collar, pinching at the skin there in a gesture meant to make him know to follow her lead. He put the plant back down, mechanical and robotic.

"We'll leave you to it, Daddy," she said in a voice far too low and slow to be natural, but Keisuke didn't question it, his confused grimace directed only to the lunch bag on his desk, wearing an expression of dawning horror.

Before he could ask, Mimi had yanked Taichi's phone from its charging cord and picked up the workbag, then dragged him out with her, moving as quick as she could through the hallways to the elevator. "If we move any faster, I will be sick all over your hair," he warned, weak.

"Don't—speak—," she warned, heaving back her own bodily impulses, and shoved the phone, with the cord still hanging from it, and his workbag into his chest when the elevator arrived and the doors opened.

 _Fuck_.

He choked, "Mrs. Takenouchi?"  _What the hell was going on today?_

Mimi flattened the fraying wisps of wet hair curling around her ears. "Councilwoman, h—hello, and good afternoon!"

Toshiko blinked coolly between the young pair, noticing the flush to both cheeks and the glassy sheen to their eyes. She folded her hands before her at the waist, clutching a thin clipboard and notebook between them. "Good afternoon, Mimi, Taichi," she greeted in a tone of utter disapproval, making him wince, scolded.

Mimi gestured behind her, stepping aside. Her voice was squeaky. "Daddy's in his office."

"Good," Toshiko answered, disinterested, and passed between them. She paused halfway down the hall. "Oh, and Taichi?"

He swallowed. "Yes, ma'am?"

She remained calm and regal. "Am I to understand that, after agreeing to be the designated driver for your friends, you decided instead to leave my daughter alone at a bar last night, with no way home?"

He felt his body go cold, frozen, and saw out of the corner of his eye Mimi take a comically exaggerated step back from him, as though hoping to extract herself from Toshiko's eyeline when it was fixed so coldly onto his guilty countenance. "I—," he stammered, blank, and behind him Mimi spoke up, high-pitched.

"We're just on our way to see her now, Councilwoman Takenouchi."

Her gaze moved to hers. "That would certainly be the responsible thing to do."

"Responsible, yes. That's what we are," said Mimi, cheerily this time. "Aren't we, Taichi?"

He turned to her, wide-eyed and open-faced. "I need to find Sora."

She glowered at his transparency, then flashed a reassuring smile at Toshiko's unimpressed expression, grasping Taichi by the elbow to pull him into the elevator. "Until next time, Councilwoman."

"Hm," said Toshiko, already turning away, but Mimi, channeling her mother, kept her earnest smile on until the door was firmly closed.

The elevator jolted up at the same time as she struck her foot to his ankle. "Are you always this slow up on the up take?"

He rubbed his ankle with the back of his other foot, inching away from her. "My phone barely got charged, so that's not going to work—and I told Takaishi to call your dad's office if Sora texts him back—,"

"Just calm down! I'll tell him to call me," she grumbled, taking out her phone in a show of reluctant petulance. "Honestly, how you accuse my family of being codependent and this is how you combust without Sora in eyesight…." Taichi didn't answer, distracted, and Mimi glanced at him when the elevator doors opened again. He stepped out into the lobby, walking back to the staff parking lot, as though forgetting she was there at all, or that he'd ever been in mid-conversation with her. She thought briefly for a minute what it would be like, to have hurt Jou and not know how to find him. Sucking in her breath, she started to march up to him when her phone rang, cutting through his mutterings. He closed his mouth at once, waiting anxiously, while Mimi answered. "Hello? Oh—hi, Sora! It's Mimi. Well, of course, yes, you know who you're calling—hey!" for he'd yanked the phone from her, striding several steps away from earshot and holding his other hand up to his free ear.

"Sor? You all right?"

Her voice sounded distant, even despite the fraying quality of the cell signal. "Are you?"

"Just a little hung over," he joked, nervous. "We're, uh, leaving City Hall now. There's no way I could get any work done today."

She didn't respond to the jovial tone. "Going to see Catherine?"

"No, I—I'm not with her. Obviously," he added, hearing how lame and slow he sounded, "she, uh, she went back to her boyfriend."

Behind him, Mimi stopped, strangely still, putting all the pieces together too late, and Taichi turned away to keep her out of the periphery of his gaze, to hide.

Sora spoke again, "Not that that would stop you, I guess."

He gritted his teeth, taking a breath. "Sora, can I please come see you?"

"You know, Taichi," she said, interrupting. "My job isn't to absolve you of the guilt you feel when you make shitty, selfish decisions. So, no. You can't come and see me, because I don't want to see you, and I don't want you to call me, and I don't want you using your new friends to try and track me down. Do we understand each other?"

Taichi said nothing.

"Good," Sora said, crisp and resigned, and hung up, without another word.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a serious story. Please endeavor to keep your standards gravely low.


End file.
